[Doctors of Nursing Practice, Inc.]

I must reply to your note and question this approach. After someone graduates with a DNP degree, they will have earned an academic degree. This degree does not in-and-of-itself authorize advanced practice nursing. Are you working to earn your Nurse Practitioner designation also?

A second concern I have with your statement is that you will be practicing medicine. This is not true. You may be in advanced practice nursing and have an NP credential but that is not practicing medicine – it is advanced practice nursing.

To say you or any nurse if practicing medicine is a falsehood. I put this out there as soon as I saw your note to help assure that all nursing colleagues are working toward a common goal: Improving health care outcomes in the context of our skills, education, license, and certification.

What do you think?

[Doctors of Nursing Practice, Inc.]

You ask a great question – one that I will ask of you and others. What contributions have DNP prepared colleagues made as a result of the pandemic? Thats a tough question to answer. A bigger question is what contributions and changes to health care delivery can we attribute to DNP prepared nurses? There are many that are difficult to quantify and list.
We are contributing – we are making changes – yet can we list them and highlight them adequately?

[Doctors of Nursing Practice, Inc.]

Wendy – thank you for your post. I’m curious about the dynamics surround the patient that did not like the nurse due to an accent. Was this the one that was accommodated by changing the nurses’ assignment? Does your facility have a policy that documents that all patients will receive equitable services by a diverse group of professionals? It seems to me that if a patient cannot abide by these rules the next step for the hospital would be to help arrange for the patient to be transferred to a different facility – at the patient’s expense. Is this approach I offer too harsh?

[Doctors of Nursing Practice, Inc.]

I’m slow to respond to your post but salute you for your thoughts and how well you articulated the challenges of securing and completing clinical or practicum hours. I’ve seen some venomous posts on FaceBook by groups that want to do away with programs for this reason yet this seems counterproductive to me. The idea of an organization that could manage NP residencies or fellowships sounds good, but honestly, it may be out of the scope or buy-in from most universities and regions. I know from past experiences that BSN programs struggled to secure their clinical experiences even with a county-wide or regional application that helped to promote this process. So – we continue to struggle and push through. Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts and insights.

[Doctors of Nursing Practice, Inc.]

Thank you for your post and question, Avery. The challenge of securing a clinical site (for NP or DNP education) is tremendous. The discussions I see seem to mandate that schools provide the clinical sites yet in reality there are not enough for the number of students. It’s refreshing seeing that you are encouraging the investment of time to build opportunities. This is a good discussion to have.

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