Practice barriers for all four APNs roles in your state
Identify and describe practice barriers for all four APNs roles in your state and discuss these barriers on a state and national level. The four roles include the nurse midwife, nurse anesthetist, nurse practitioner and clinical nurse specialist.
Sample Solution
The practice barriers for the four Advanced Practice Nurse (APN) roles, including nurse midwife, nurse anesthetist, nurse practitioner and clinical nurse specialist vary on both a state and national level. On a national level, APNs often face restrictions due to their reliance on physician collaboration or delegation. In some states they may be limited by the scope of practice that is legislatively mandated and/or defined in regulations (Lambert & Browning-McNee, 2020). This can be problematic as it limits the ability of APNs to provide optimal care for their patients since many procedures require a physician’s order prior to being performed.
On a state level, these limitations are compounded because each individual state has its own laws governing what APNs are allowed to do within their scope of practice. For instance, in some states such as Texas and California there are very restrictive limitations placed on what APNs can and cannot do without direct supervision from a licensed physician (Byrd et al., 2019). These restrictions make it difficult for APNs to take full advantage of their educational training and experience when providing patient care.
In addition to scope of practice barriers at both the state and national levels, another barrier encountered by many APNs is reimbursement issues related to how insurance companies reimburse them for services provided. Insurance providers may not cover certain services or treatments that they deem unnecessary or unnecessary expensive; this leads directly into decreased income potential for any given provider (Gillespie et al., 2016).
Finally, access remains an issue especially in rural areas where there are fewer resources available overall including lack of willing physicians with whom collaboration might occur as well as difficulties recruiting experienced practitioners who have advanced degrees but no local license allowing them to practice within those jurisdictions (Fadden & Mainous III., 2018). These access issues lead directly into reduced quality health outcomes across entire communities which ultimately affect everyone regardless if whether they interact with an advanced practitioner directly or not.
