South University: Nursing 5000 - Role of the Advanced Practice Nurse Week Four Project.100% CORRECT

South University: Nursing 5000 - Role of the Advanced Practice Nurse Week Four Project Advanced Practice Nurses are considered to be at the front line of patient care and are proving to be one of the most popular career paths for individuals to choose. An APN can decide to pursue four specialties: a Nurse Practitioner, a Clinical Nurse Specialist, A Nurse Anesthetists, and a Nurse Midwife. Additionally, APNs play an invaluable role in promoting change and advancing the healthcare field as we see it. In this paper, we will be discussing how APN practice demonstrates cost-effectiveness, how APN practice can influence a reduction in errors, and how APN practice affects misuse or overuse of services. Nurse Practitioners have proven to be just as valuable as physicians in the healthcare field. NPs provide direct care to patients in primary, urgent, and specialty areas and have demonstrated their ability to enhance patient experiences. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the profession of Nurse Practitioners is projected to grow by forty-five percent from (What’s the, n.d.). Over the years, Nurse Practitioners have “proven to be cost-effective providers of high- quality care, administering equivalent or improved medical care at a lower total cost than physicians” (Nurse Practitioner, n.d.). As a result, NPs are being integrated into primary care settings more and more, filling the gap in physician shortages and improving the quality of care, and decreasing the cost of care. According to a study, “evidence shows primary care practices that used more APNs in care delivery had lower labor costs per patient compared to practices that had minimal use of APNs” (Abraham et al., 2019). Additionally, Nurse Practitioners typically spend more time with their patients than physicians do, resulting in more accurate diagnoses, fewer visits to the hospital or urgent care, and a reduction in errors made. Nurse Practitioners play an essential role in reducing errors in the healthcare field. For example, visits to patients are made within forty-eight hours of discharge by the NPs, resulting in fewer plan of care and medication errors. In addition, a recent study shows “the implementation of the NP/APN role in the emergency and critical care settings improves patient outcomes and reduces errors” (Fong et al., 2017). Furthermore, having Advanced Practice Nurses (APN) in primary care settings ensures that patients are seen promptly, thus decreasing the risk of medical errors. This also assures that the misuse or overuse of services is less likely to happen. The misuse of medical services increases medical errors, causing healthcare providers to overuse services due to ineffective treatment (Overuse, 2020). The presence of Nurse Practitioners has filled the gap in physician shortages, allowing more patients to access primary care services, improving the way care is delivered, and diminishing the misuse or overuse of medical services. Unfortunately, studies have shown “there is strong evidence for the widespread overuse of several specific medical services in many countries, suggesting that overuse is common around the world and might be increasing” (Fong et al., 2017). This is why it is essential to implement APNs into more areas of the healthcare field and give patients more access to the care they require and deserve. In summary, it is clear that Advanced Practice Nurses play a vital role in cost-effective care, reducing medical errors and the effects of misuse or overuse of medical services. In addition, any of the four specialties an APN chooses will play an invaluable role in promoting change within the healthcare field, thus proving them to be at the forefront of patient care. As John Ruskin said, “quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent effort” (80+ Best, n.d.).