NRS 430 Professional Development Discussion

The newest areas of focus in the 2016 standards include: facilitating professional role development, including practice transitions, managing change, championing scientific inquiry, collaborating interprofessionally, and advancing the specialty as leaders and mentors.

Five current issues in the NPD sphere of influence identified by Woolforde[2] were new practice arenas, new roles in NPD, increasing diversity, return on investment, and NPD leadership.

With the changing healthcare environment, roles of health care providers are changing. More care is being provided outside the acute care setting in outpatient care settings, such as clinics, home care, and other specialized care facilities. NPD practitioners need to expand their role to support the transition of nurses and other healthcare team members across learning and practice environments. With the new practice arenas comes new roles for nurses. The Future of Nursing Report from the Institute of Medicine challenges nurses to assume new and expanded roles to help meet the evolving needs of the healthcare system. There are now nurse navigators, health coaches, community health workers, and many new roles in nursing informatics, telehealth, and patient safety. Nursing as a profession and associations such as ANPD are working on ways to increase diversity in the field. We need to have diverse practitioners to help meet the needs of our diverse population.