For those of you unfamiliar with this nursing designation, it stands for Certified Registered Nurse Practitioner. It is not a familiar term, such as the better known LPN or RN that we so often see on the nametags of our caregivers. Nonetheless, there are some 150,000 nurses in the United States with this prestigious CRNP designation. I say prestigious because in comparison, there are 2.6 million RNs working in the United States. This translates to roughly 1 in 18 nurses having the CRNP designation.

What’s so special about a CRNP, you may ask. To become a CRNP you must first obtain your Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree. That’s four years in college. Then you must continue your education for another 2 years to receive their Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) degree.

There are three other common APN designations: Clinical Nurse Specialists, Nurse Anesthetists, and Nurse-Midwives. The CNS gives one on one patient care and proficient examinations in one of many nursing specialties, such as emergency room care, oncology or pediatrics. NAs provide anesthesia and allied pre and post surgical care for a variety of diagnostic and surgical procedures. NWs provide initial care to women, including exams, pregnancy planning advice, prenatal care, assistance with childbirth and neonatal care.

Back to the CRNP and the role they play. The primary functions of the Nurse Practitioner as taken from the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners standards for practice are:

* Provide primary health care services to individuals, families, groups of clients, and communities
* NP care is characterized by an emphasis on health promotion and disease prevention
* NPs may order, conduct, and interpret appropriate diagnostic and laboratory tests and prescribe pharmacological agents, treatments, and non-pharmacological therapies
* Educating and counseling individuals and their families regarding healthy lifestyle behaviors

The CRNP may be one major player in reducing health care costs. The role played by Nurse Practitioners is completely in tune with current health care philosophy, which embraces the importance of prevention. The CRNP is also trained to deliver primary health care services, which could easily address the shortage of physicians we face in rural communities, small towns and our inner cities.

Other factors to consider as our population and health care delivery systems mature, are increases in outpatient surgeries, earlier hospital release following major surgery, the popularity of home health care and the emergence of home hospice care. These developments in health care will require the skill sets available in all advanced practice nursing fields.

The nursing profession is clearly evolving to meet our changing health care needs. Much in the way the General Practitioner of the past is now a rare breed, outnumbered by a pantheon of doctors specializing in everything from cancer to sports medicine, the RN of today may become the nurse equivalent, overwhelmed by advanced nurse practitioners specializing in fields as diverse as their physician counterparts.

Without a doubt, all four advanced practice specialties Nurse Practitioners, Clinical Nurse Specialists, Nurse Anesthetists, and Nurse-Midwives will be in high demand, particularly, as we have said previously, in areas such as urban inner cities and small rural communities.

Author Bio: Winston P. McDonald enjoys writing for Uniformhaven.com which sells discount landau scrubs and cherokee scrubs as well as a host of additional products.

Category: Career
Keywords: health care,nurse practitioner,crnp deesignation,clinical nurse specialist