The Nurse Practitioner’s Place

I try not to include entire posts while commenting on stories, but I felt it needed to be read in it’s entirety to understand my angst. Please look for my responses mixed into the article in bold.

Council for the Advancement of Comprehensive Care and National Board of Medical Examiners Announce New Certification Examination for Doctors of Nursing Practice

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Council for the Advancement of Comprehensive Care (CACC) and the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) today announced that they have reached an agreement to develop and administer a Certification Examination for Doctors of Nursing Practice (DNP). This competency-based examination, which will be administered to DNP graduates for the first time in November 2008, will assess the knowledge and skills necessary to support advanced clinical practice. It will be comparable in content, similar in format and will measure the same set of competencies and apply similar performance standards as Step 3 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE), which is administered to physicians as one component of qualifying for licensure.

At first, I was very excited upon hearing about a DNP in order to help us advance to the next level but:

The Doctor of Nursing Practice degree was developed in 1999 to respond to a national need for increased access to comprehensive patient care. More than 200 schools have or plan to establish a DNP program. This degree builds on nursing licensure as an advanced practice nurse by adding expanded knowledge and skill in nursing and medical aspects of care for complex illness. The growing burden of chronic illness in the United States will require an even greater focus on collaborative and team-based care.

DNP certification is a three-part process. Candidates must attain licensure as advanced practice nurses, graduate from a DNP program, and successfully complete the CACC Doctor of Nursing Practice Certification Examination. In addition to completion of the DNP educational program, a passing score on the DNP Examination is intended to provide further evidence to the public that DNP certificants are qualified to provide comprehensive patient care. CACC will also focus its efforts on working within the nursing communities to define standards of care as well as develop and implement policies and procedures for monitoring the performance of individuals certified as DNPs, including their patients’ outcomes.

The Council for the Advancement of Comprehensive Care (CACC) was established in 2000 to further the development of standard clinical competencies for graduates of Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) programs. The Council determined that a national certification process would provide the public with a reliable way to identify advanced nurse clinicians with the DNP degree who can provide comprehensive care. Council membership is comprised of nurses, physicians, health care organization representatives and health and public policy experts.

The NBME is an independent, not-for-profit organization that provides high-quality examinations for the health professions. Protection of the health of the public through state of the art assessment of health professionals is the mission of the NBME, along with a major commitment to research and development in evaluation and measurement. The NBME was founded in 1915 because of the need for a voluntary, nationwide examination that medical licensing authorities could accept as the standard by which to judge candidates for medical licensure. Since that time, it has continued without interruption to provide high-quality examinations for this purpose and has become a model and a resource of international stature in testing methodologies and evaluation in health professions.

Rubenstein Communications, Inc.
Adam Pockriss, 212-843-8286
apockriss@rubenstein.com

This is implying that Master’s level NPs are not capable of giving comprehensive care to our patients? I am offended by this statement. I don’t feel the need to continue my education in a college setting in order to do what I already do on a daily basis very well. My patients receive comprehensive, family practice primary care without feeding the University machine. I don’t think taking a medical doctor type of exam is going to give us any more credence that an exam written specifically for NPs. Until I see a real need to go further, with real proof that we benefit from doing the DNP, I will watch and wait.