Discussion: Career Goals: Strengths and Challenges Related to Nursing Practice Competencies

An advanced practice nurse collaborates and communicates with patients, families, doctors, nurses, and specialists to ensure patients receive the care they need. As they diagnose, treat, manage, and educate patients, they are responsible for ensuring patient safety and maintaining ethical behavior. Competencies have been developed to help advanced practice nurse to understand the practice knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to be successful.

For this Discussion, you will examine advanced nursing practice competencies and reflect on your strengths and challenges related to the competencies. In light of your reflection, you will consider how this course may help you attain your career goals or objectives.

To prepare:

• Review the Learning Resources for this week, specifically the advanced nursing practice competencies. As you review the competencies, reflect on your own strengths and challenges when working with adults across the lifespan.

By Day 3

Post a summary of your expectations of this course. Also, include a brief explanation of your strengths and challenges as they relate to nursing practice competencies when working with adults. Describe any career goals or objectives this course may help you accomplish in the Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) or Adult-Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner (AGPCNP) role and explain why. Use your research to support your explanations by providing credible and scholarly sources.

Read a selection of your colleagues’ responses.

By Day 6

Respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days by offering a suggestion or resources to help your colleagues in addressing their personal strengths or challenges, or their career goals. Use your research to support your suggestions. Provide at least 3 credible and current scholarly sources.

Note: For this Discussion, you are required to complete your initial post before you will be able to view and respond to your colleagues’ postings. Begin by clicking on the Post to Discussion Question link and then select Create Thread to complete your initial post. Remember, once you click Submit, you cannot delete or edit your own posts, and you cannot post anonymously. Please check your post carefully before clicking on Submit!

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Solution

Strengths and Challenges Related to Nursing Practice Competencies

Nursing competencies refer to the ability of nurses to take appropriate action in their nursing practices through the utilization of knowledge, skills, beliefs, and past experiences. This allows them to effectively perform their role and collaborate with other parties in an organization. Advanced practice nurses need to have a comprehensive understanding of the strengths and challenges to perform their roles successfully.

Through the course, students learn how Adult-Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner (AGPCNP) perform their duties in making decisions and taking care of adult populations. The course should also help students diagnose and manage primary healthcare patients and identify problems among the adults and elderly population. Through the course, we will acquire more knowledge regarding physical and behavioral diseases in the primary diagnosis process (Farrell, Payne, & Heye, 2015). Therefore students can plan, implement, and evaluate evidence-based approaches that promote health in primary care patients. I also expect to acquire the skills and confidence required in a clinical setup by the end of the course. Hence I can comprehend how to plan, evaluate and execute therapeutic systems for adult patients with chronic or acute illnesses.

Particular competencies are essential in (AGPCNP). An AGPCNP is a nurse who specializes in promoting and sustaining health, particularly among culturally; diverse and high-risk populations. These nurses can examine and manage health conditions across different age populations, from adolescents to older adults suffering from acute and several chronic illnesses. As an AGPCNP student, competencies to acquire include assessing and intervening in situations, effective communications, critical thinking, and patient caring and relations helps them perform their duties effectively (Hwang 2015). The required to fulfill competencies include monitoring, therapeutic approaches, reporting, and computing skills. Their extensive research skills significantly contribute to critical thinking. Lastly, having the proper ethical values and patient advocacy ensures that nurses relate well with their patients.

There are several strengths attributed to the nursing competencies of AGPCNP. The first is relationship management, where through their communication and relationship competencies, they can deliver disturbing news that will not affect the health issues of a patient (Fukada 2018). This is incredibly impactful with the elderly population. Other skills that strengthen their competencies include teamwork and collaboration, knowledge of evidence-based practices, health, quality improvement, and safety (Want, Goodman, and Selway, 2021). The practitioners’ challenges are increased workload since more patients are being diagnosed with multiple chronic conditions among adolescents, adults, and older adults.

An Adult-Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner (AGPCNP) is intensely committed to managing their patients’ health and community. My career goal is striving to prevent illnesses by educating communities and patients on healthy lifestyle habits. I will also provide education and sufficient knowledge to the patients on healthcare choices to avoid diabetes and, obesity among others. I firmly find passion in providing primary care to patients because they also get to self-manage themselves regarding their health. I also strongly advocate for collaboration among community members to promote a healthier society. The course will help me acquire the skills necessary to examine patients, diagnose, and treat, among others necessary for promoting a patient’s health. I will also develop skills to train patients on how to self-manage themselves, develop healthy lifestyles to enhance health and prevent illnesses. These skills will help me perform my duties effectively and collaborate with nurses, doctors, patients, and other practitioners.

References

Farrell, K., Payne, C., & Heye, M. (2015). Integrating interprofessional collaboration skills into the advanced practice registered nurse socialization process. Journal of Professional Nursing, 31(1), 5-10.

Fukada M. (2018). Nursing Competency: Definition, Structure, and Development. Yonago Acta Medica, 61(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.33160/yam.2018.03.001

wang, J. I. (2015). What are hospital nurses’ strengths and weaknesses in patient safety competence? Findings from three Korean hospitals. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 27(3), 232-238

Want, D., Goodman, P., and Selway, J., 2021. Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Clinical Procedural Skills. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners.