Nurse Practitioners and the Challenges Faced by Them

Today, the medical field is one of the fastest growing industries all over the world and along with this, grows the demand for doctors, nurses and other medical assistants who make up the medical field. Nursing practitioners (NP) are those nurses, who are graduates in advanced nursing practice. These people are supposed to have completed the training program for the nurse practitioners in some medical clinic or health centre and should also have good knowledge and experience in assessing, diagnosing, as well as treating any disease. These practitioners nurse are expected to provide good care to the patients, whatever be the disease they are suffering from. The challenges posed for the Practitioners of nurse are many. One of the biggest challenges is the requirement for a very progressive and flexible approach in the case of the care given to each patient. This is because almost half of the work of the physicians is to be taken care of by such trained and expert nurse practitioners. Hence, they should have the ability to interact well with others in the medical field and handle the work efficiently, with a leadership quality. This holds more relevance in the case of areas crowded with lower class people, who do not have the financial ability to go for general physicians often. In such cases, nurses are expected to give them medical advice, diagnose the disease of patients and help to cure it. They are also responsible for monitoring the condition of people with some severe illness, and treating them appropriately, along with prescribing the necessary medicines and giving advices on health, nutrition etc. Getting an awareness of the seriousness of the profession, and learning the difference and the importance of the profession from other health field professions is one of the biggest challenges for any nursing staff. The training program for the nurse practitioners is meant to give this awareness and improve their skills in diagnosis, counselling, providing emotional support, case management, research, audit etc. The practise regulation and the ability to prescribe medicines for the patients are the two important barriers for Nurse Practitioners. If they were allowed to prescribe medicines for the patients, the number of patients for each doctor would come down naturally! Hence, the doctor's organisation is totally against letting the nurse practitioners start prescribing medicines for various diseases. The argument they put forward is that no training can make nurse practitioners efficient enough to treat diseases and prescribe medicines. They claim that only very little training is given in the training programs. But today, the training programs for nurse practitioners are increasing as well as improving in their standards, so that each nurse who completes the course can take up the responsibilities efficiently. There is a standard quality of care given to the patients, expected from every nurse practitioner. Though the public respects and accepts them, it is the medical organisations that are against promoting their growth. In the near future, this will also change, owing to the increasing demand in the medical field.