Professional Responsibility and Standards

Advance Nurse Professional Responsibility and Standards

Professional Responsibility and Standards of Practice

For advanced nursing practice, there’s a lot of paperwork, regulations, and legal info jammed everywhere, especially for PMHNPs. I will try to simplify as much as possible but it’s still overwhelming and very loaded. However, when dealing with patient care, there’s so much that has evolved that you need ironclad protection and information to overcome the challenges. If you work in a hospital, these things are usually already hashed out and predetermined but here are a few important standards related to PMHNPs:

Professional Practice Standards

The American Psych Nurse Ass. (APNA) is the largest organization for psychiatry nurses. APNA also has affiliations with the International Society of Psych-Mental Health Nurses (ISPN) comprises of 3 specialties (now defunct specialty areas); Child & Adolescent Psych Nurses, Consultation-Liaison Nurses, & Society for Edu. & Research in Psych-Mental Health Nursing. These forces combined with other entities such as Licensure, Accreditation, Credentialing, & Education (LACE) have comprised and promoted an APRN Regulatory model called the APRN Consensus Model -therefore, it doesn’t just apply to PMHNPs:

The Goals of the Consensus Model

  • Strive for harmony & understanding in the APRN regulatory community.
  • Develop a vision for APRN regulation, including licensure, accreditation, certification, and education (LACE).
  • Establish a standard that protects the public, improves APRN mobility and improves access to care. Produce a document that reflects consensus on APRN regulatory issues. Download the document here.

What is LACE?

  • Licensure is the granting of authority to practice
  • Accreditation is the formal review and approval by a recognized agency of educational degree or certification programs in nursing or nursing-related programs.
  • Certification is the formal recognition of the knowledge, skills, and experience demonstrated by the achievement of standards identified by the profession.
  • Education is the formal preparation of APRNs in graduate degree-granting or post-graduate certificate programs.

What is the APRN’s Consensus Model? These are factors that pertain to ALL APRNs to provide guidance for states to adopt uniformity in the regulation of APRN roles to the following competencies. Read additional information:

  1. Scientific Foundation
  2. Leadership
  3. Quality
  4. Practice Inquiry
  5. Technology and Information Literacy
  6. Policy
  7. Health Delivery system
  8. Ethics
  9. Independent Practice

What is the IOM Nursing Report? The Int. of Medicine (IOM) includes 4 key messages about the future of nursing:

  1. Nurses should practice to the full extent of their education, training, and licensure.
  2. Nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training through an improved education system that promotes seamless academic progression.
  3. Nurses should be full partners, with physicians and other health professionals, in redesigning health care in the United States.
  4. Effective workforce planning and policymaking require better data collection and improved information infrastructure.

These messages also include 8 recommendations to reach these goals for future nursing, read more here.

  1. Remove the barriers to the scope of practice.
  2. Expand opportunities for nurses to lead and improve collaborative efforts.
  3. Implement a residency for nurses.
  4. Increase the proportion of BSN nurses to 80% in 2020.
  5. Double the number of nurses with a doctorate by 2020.
  6. Ensure nurses engage in lifelong learning.
  7. Prepare and enable nurses to lead change in advanced health.
  8. Build infrastructures for the collection of information and analysis of interprofessional healthcare workforce data.

Professional Quality Standards

These measures and initiatives matter for improving the quality of care and just as important insurance reimbursements. If infectious rates are going up or if practices are constantly getting flagged, quality measures are a way of improving and monitoring the progress of the health system:

  • The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act (PSQIA): a voluntary reporting system to improve data available to assess and resolve patient safety.
  • Quality Assurance (QA)/Quality Improvement (QI)/Continuous Process Improvement (CPI)/Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI): focuses on the management of organizations to monitor, evaluate, a continuous review of system processes to improve the quality of health care delivery and practices.
  • Quality assurance: a process for evaluating patient care using established standards of care to ensure quality.
  • Root Cause Analysis: identifying prevention strategies to ensure safety. It includes: an inter-disciplinary of experts associated with that area, those involved/familiar with the situation, assessing the cause and effect, identifying changes needed to improve the outcomes, to have a process as impartial as possible, and consists of “why’s” until the root of the problem is established.

Continue to Endorse Healthy People 2020

Access and improving health care are both major issues in health policy. Published in 1990 by the U.S. Dept of Health & Services (DHHS), the document has hundreds of health objectives based on numerous focus areas. Read about the topics for mental health.

Mission—Healthy People 2020 strives to: ■ Identify nationwide health improvement priorities; ■ Increase public awareness and understanding of the determinants of health, disease, and disability and the opportunities for progress; ■ Provide measurable objectives and goals that are applicable at the national, state, and local levels; ■ Engage multiple sectors to take actions to strengthen policies and improve practices that are driven by the best available evidence and knowledge; and ■ Identify critical research, evaluation, and data collection needs.

Overarching Goals ■ Attain high-quality, longer lives free of preventable disease, disability, injury, and premature death. Achieve health equity, eliminate disparities, and improve the health of all groups. Create social and physical environments that promote good health for all. Promote quality of life, healthy development, and healthy behaviors across all life stages.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email