Nursing Competencies Essay
Nursing Competencies Essay
The National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties (NONPF) has determined nine broad areas of core competence that apply to all nurse practitioners, regardless of specialty or patient population focus. NONPF created the first set of Nurse Practitioner Competencies in 1990; the most recent updates were incorporated in 2017. This course was designed to prepare you to synthesize knowledge gained throughout the program and to apply each of the nine core competencies within your selected areas of practice and your representative communities.

The nine areas of competency are:

Scientific Foundations
Leadership
Quality
Practice Inquiry
Technology and Information Literacy
Policy
Health Delivery System
Ethics
Independent Practice
To Prepare
Review this week’s Learning Resources, focusing on the NONPF Core Competencies Content.
The Assignment
For each of the nine NONPF competencies, write one paragraph explaining how the program has prepared you to meet the competency (for a total of at least nine paragraphs). Then, propose how you plan to engage in social change in your community as a nurse practitioner. Finally, describe 1–2 legislative and/or advocacy activities in which your state nurse practitioner organization(s) are involved. Be specific and provide examples.

Nursing competencies
            Nursing competencies refer to incorporating a combination of professional skills and knowledge, personal principles, beliefs, values, and work experience in nursing practice (Lavoie et al., 2018) Nursing Competencies Essay. Nursing competencies play a vital role in nurse performance evaluation. A competent nurse must address the nine competencies of nurse practitioners for quality health outcomes to be achieved. The competencies are similar in all specialties of nurse practitioners. Therefore, a nurse practitioner must understand and apply these competencies in practice for a valid nurse practitioner license to be guaranteed. Nurse competencies are applied at all community levels to improve the general health status of a community. This paper aims to look at looking the nine core competencies of nursing and their effectiveness in practice.
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Scientific foundation
            It is a competence that reflects on nursing education. The competence ensures that nurse practitioners acquire a comprehensive and robust foundation of medical sciences before graduating. All nurse practitioner students must gain an understanding of pharmacology and pathophysiology in their respective specialties. The scientific competence also requires a nurse practitioner student to understand clinical setting guidelines, evidence-based practices, treatment of vulnerable diseases, and various research translations (Park & Ji, 2018). Through scientific competence, I would engage in medical research through the guidelines of evidence-based practices to develop ethical health solutions at a community level Nursing Competencies Essay.
Leadership
It is a competence that prepares nurse practitioner students in professional scholarships and health advocacy roles. Leadership competence ensures that all practitioner students understand their roles as team leaders and their standards of practice while leading a team of healthcare providers (Park & Ji, 2018). Leadership competence also addresses the issue of quality communication skills and the diverse cultures that surround nurses in their daily routine. Through this competence, I would be able to gain quality communication skills, excellent decision-making skills, and the ability to solve problems. I would therefore be able to conduct programs concerning community health effectively.
Quality
            It refers to the measure of success of any health service towards the increase of the target outcome. For quality health outcomes to be achieved, nurses must apply their knowledge and skills effectively. They must also be willing to deliver health services with reduced harm and errors. The main focus of quality competence is accessing and using information databases and evaluating and interpreting research findings (Hökkä et al., 2020) Nursing Competencies Essay. I would apply my clinical and medical skills and knowledge at the community level for health status and outcome improvement through this competence.
Practice inquiry
            It is a competence that encompasses research translation. Nurse practitioners are expected to engage in academic research and understand applying the research into the clinical setting (Park & Ji, 2018). Through research application into the clinical setting, nurses understand how to apply research to their patients’ thus improving patient outcomes Nursing Competencies Essay. I would apply this competence at the community level as research-based to identify the existing health problems and the necessary solutions to these health problems. I would therefore be able to improve health status at the communal level through this competence.
Technology and information Literacy
            It is a competence that focuses on the incorporation of technology in nursing practice. A nurse practitioner should use digital communication tools, have network access, manage and create effective communication during service delivery to their patients. Nurse practitioners should know about utilizing the available technology to facilitate patients’ health information privacy. Technology should also be utilized to improve patient outcomes. Utilizing information technology helps the caregivers understand the patients’ health conditions, thus motivating them to offer the necessary treatment (Lavoie et al., 2018). The use of information technology also motivates the patients as there is guaranteed safety in their critical health information. I would apply this competence at the community level by educating the community members on disease prevention measures. For this to be achieved, I would use various social platforms and media houses, thus facilitating quality health outcomes Nursing Competencies Essay.
Policy
Policy refers to all local, state, national and global level programs implemented to facilitate the allocation of health resources. Nurses play a vital role in the legislation and advocacy of these programs since they better understand patients’ primary and complex needs. Nurses, therefore, engage in policy legislation to help address social concerns such as literacy, poverty, and violence at the community level (Hökkä et al., 2020). Nurse students may opt to support any existing healthcare policy to help them understand policy development and implementation in a clinical setting. Through these existing healthcare policies, nurse students can also be able to develop other ethical healthcare policies. Nurses can use these policies to create awareness among community members of their health rights as citizens. As a nurse practitioner, I would use this skill to educate the community members on their rights, such as health insurance as US citizens.
Health delivery systems
Health delivery systems encompass the process of planning, developing, and implementing any public and community health program. Nurse practitioners engage in health delivery systems through developing major organizational reforms, enhancing decision making, and creating culturally competent care (Lavoie et al., 2018). The skill also helps the nurses to critically think on organizational resource allocation as well as organizational structures. Nurses can apply this skill at the community level in policy implementation after identifying an existing health problem.
Ethics
It involves gaining a proper understanding of ethical issues that should be observed between nurse-patient interactions. It plays a vital role in helping nurse practitioners make proper decisions on a patient’s health status. It also helps nurse practitioners understand all the consequences of the decisions made towards patient treatment procedures (Hökkä et al., 2020). Through the skills of ethics, community health dilemmas are handled by nurses in time. Quality care delivery by nurses is also maintained under the available guidelines that govern nursing practice. Ethics also helps nurses to maintain the privacy of the communal health information Nursing Competencies Essay.
Independent practice
            It is a competence that embraces a nurse practitioner as a licensed healthcare provider who can independently work without any supervision. The skill, therefore, facilitates nurse practitioners to conduct health assessment, diagnosis, and treatment prescription to patients (Lavoie et al., 2018). Therefore, nurse practitioners are recognized by law as professionals who have the skills and knowledge to manage both diagnosed and undiagnosed patients independently Nursing Competencies Essay. Therefore, nurses are expected to offer quality healthcare services at the community level through critical thinking since not all decisions require clinical interventions. Nurses should ensure quality healthcare service delivery through offering culturally accepted health services.
There are various advocacy activities that my home State of Illinois nurse practitioner associations are involved in. One of the most popular is the Illinois action coalition. It is a program that was implemented to provide solutions to health-threatening factors (de Cordova et al., 2019). It was also formed to implement solutions to the problems that nurses face in their daily routine.
In conclusion, nurse competencies have been widely used to transform health community changes. Nurses utilize a combination of all these nine competencies, which have facilitated the improvement of health community status. These skills have also facilitated quality health service delivery by nurses. Nursing Competencies Essay Through these competencies, nurses have also been able to gain quality skills, knowledge, and experience that motivate them towards providing healthcare to their patients.
 
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