Nurse Practitioner Essay

Words: 439
Pages: 2

The tortuous journey of introducing the Nurse Practitioner as a new member of the healthcare team: a meta-synthesis. The aim of this study was to explore the obstacles to and the opportunities for achieving optimal interprofessional team collaboration with the introduction of the nurse practitioner (NP). According to both the World Health Organization (WHO) and prior research, a team approach is one of the most important factors in both achieving sustainable and safe care and decreasing the costs of health care (12–16). A team approach can contribute importantly to sustainable and safe patient care, and NPs have been added to the healthcare team in many countries. The Institute of Medicine (17) emphasises that nonfunctional teamwork can lead to patient safety risks. The …show more content…
Literature in the field of nursing was searched on PubMed and CINAHL, and empirical qualitative studies from outpatient and inpatient care in seven countries were included. The studies were appraised according to national guidelines and templates and were analysed and synthesised according to the meta-ethnographic approach. A total of 26 studies were included in the synthesis. The analysis revealed four themes: (i) a threat to professional boundaries, (ii) a resource for the team, (iii) the quest for autonomy and control, and (iv) necessary properties of a developing interprofessional collaboration. Based on these themes, the synthesis was created and presented as a metaphorical journey. The implementation of a new nursing role in a traditional healthcare team is a complex process influenced by many factors and can be described as 'a tortuous journey towards a partially unknown destination'. The synthesized obstacles and opportunities drawn from international studies may help healthcare organizations and new NPs prepare for, and optimize, the implementation of a new nursing