The Role of Nurse Practitioners Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

The Role of Nurse Practitioners - Term Paper Example Education The minimum educational requirements for admission into PA programs are at least two years of undergraduate coursework in the basic and behavioral sciences. PA programs must be accredited by the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant. On average, an institution consists of 27 months of instructional and clinical content focusing on the care of patients over the lifespan (Ponte & O’Neill, 2013). Over the years â€Å"PA training has evolved into an advanced competency-based and accredited educational program, with the broad core curriculum content resembling that of medical school training† (Atwater et al, 2008, p. ...   involves inpatient and outpatient rotations in various settings including family and internal medicine, pediatrics, gynecology and obstetrics, general surgery, psychiatry, and emergency medicine (Atwater et al, 2008, p. 729).Contingent on the program, the PA student has conferred a Master’s, Bachelor’s, Associate’s, or Certificate degree. To attain licensure, all PA students take the same certifying exam administered by the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (Ponte & O’Neill, 2013). NP programs, graduate programs based on the nursing model, are approved by the state board of nursing and are accredited by a national nursing accreditation body such as the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2013; Ponte & O’Neill, 2013). Dependent on the NP program, the average minimum requirement for admission is a baccalaureate degree in nursing or a baccalaureate degree in another fie ld (Ponte & O’Neill, 2013). In either case, to begin the program, a student must first obtain a registered nursing (RN) license in the state the school operates. Additionally, a majority of NP programs require the student to have at least one year of experience as an RN. Programs include two years of classroom instruction and clinical rotations; additionally, students must undergo a minimum of 500 clinical hours to complete requirements (Atwater et al, 2008; Cross, Boukus, Samuel & Yee, 2013).Moreover, unlike the PAs, NPs choose an area of specialization.