Resources & Guides for Nurses

Despite Nightingale’s beliefs that nursing was the duty of “proper ladies,” the dire need for skilled nursing care led to the proliferation of nursing programs that predominantly served poor and working-class women who wanted a respectable profession. In fact, nursing education in America was founded in part to empower and employ lower-class women.

Advocacy is woven deeply into the nurse practitioner role. It’s a part of the job that’s never finished. Advocacy can occur at a micro level, by advocating one-on-one for a particular patient, or at the macro level, by lobbying for policy changes; it’s often a mix of the two. For many NPs, advocacy is about an issue close to their heart, one connected to underserved patients who deserve additional support. For two NP experts, the issue is children and youth in foster care.

Nurse practitioners and other nursing professionals operate in a diverse landscape of cultures and languages. Understanding a patient’s cultural background and language proficiency is essential to effective healthcare delivery. It fosters mutual respect and trust and enhances patient satisfaction and adherence to treatment plans. However, not all nurses are aware of the importance of cultural and linguistic awareness.

While one in three nurses has outstanding student debt (with an average balance of $47,000), the good news is that there are loan forgiveness and repayment programs to help RNs and APRNs get out of debt and into financial freedom. Read on for a guide to student loan repayment and forgiveness options for RNs and APRNs.

Malpractice insurance, also known as professional liability insurance, protects nurse practitioners (NPs) from claims of negligence or incompetence, covering some or all of the costs of defending against such claims—and it’s more important than ever.

If you are a nurse practitioner (NP) in one of the 23 states that do not have full practice authority, then you will need a collaborative agreement. These agreements, which can go by several different names, detail the working relationship between an NP and a supervising physician.

Nurse practitioner residency programs, sometimes referred to as fellowship programs, are postgraduate programs designed to help NPs transition to practice, particularly in specialty areas. Many residency programs are geared towards Advanced Practice Providers (APPs), a group that includes NPs and physician assistants (PAs), reinforcing the growing trend of interprofessional collaboration in care teams.

The importance and power of nurse practitioners coming together under a common goal is hard to overstate. Whether you’re a student, novice, expert, or veteran nurse practitioner, conferences can be an invaluable resource to your career.

Non-clinical NP jobs are non-patient facing and can be performed on either a part-time or full-time basis. Sometimes they still occur in medical settings, but without the patient-facing aspect; other times, they resemble a tech job more closely.

It’s clear that what these executives fear most is not the actual cost of paying travel nurses but rather what that cost signifies. Nurses who know their worth and demand competitive compensation packages and workplace safety measures are a threat to the system at large, and they will do anything to protect the status quo because it’s working perfectly for them.