After years of quietly prodding states to allow advanced practice registered nurses to provide the full range of services consistent with their training, a groundswell is building to broaden their role in the primary care system.
The 4-year-old Campaign for Action is pressing the 31 states that limit advanced practice registered nurses to allow them to evaluate patients; diagnose, order and interpret diagnostic tests; and to initiate and manage many treatments, including prescribing medications. It’s a program of the American Association of Retired Persons and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The Campaign has found partners among business groups and employers. Target, for instance, has a network of in-store clinics relying largely on advanced practice nurses to provide care. If “employers’ workforces are healthy, they are much more likely to show up at work, and if family members are healthy, it means less stress for them,” says Winifred V. Quinn, PhD, director of Advocacy and Consumer Affairs, Center to Champion Nursing in America, an initiative of AARP and the Johnson foundation.
Now, the American Association of Nurse Practitioners has opened a new front in the push to broaden the role of its members, urging the Veterans Administration to increase veterans’ access to nurse practitioners by utilizing them as full partners in the VA health care delivery system.
“AANP calls upon Secretary McDonald to hire more nurse practitioners and move forward to modernize the VA nursing handbook granting advanced practice registered nurses, including nurse practitioners, full-practice authority throughout the VA system,” declared organization president Ken Miller.
Even before the AANP call, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing endorsed the proposal by the Veterans Health Administration to recognize APRNs as full practice providers within VHA facilities.
The organization’s “Policy Brief” says, “The VHA’s recommendation directly aligns with the IOM’s landmark report The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health which calls for the removal of barriers that prevent APRNs
from practicing to their full scope, and states that nurses should be full partners with physicians and other health professionals to improve and redesign healthcare in the United States.”
The VHA recommendation has the support of numerous nursing groups and 28 members of Congress, but the decision is up to newly installed VA Secretary Robert McDonald. Whatever he ultimately decides, the push for broadening the practice areas for advanced pratice registered nurses is likely to only get stronger as the shortage of physicians, especially primary care physicians worsens in the coming years.