California Nurse Practitioners: The Scope of Practice Essay

Introduction

The Board of Registered Nursing (BRN) which is located in Sacramento, California is bestowed with the responsibility of ensuring that information regarding the scope of practice for its nurses is made available for use by nurse practitioners. The aim of this is to prevent financial or legal penalties that might come as a result of the lack of such kind of information. According to Considine, Martin, Smit, Jenkins & Winter (2006), such kind of information is meant to assist registered nurses that are now practitioners to know how to incorporate various regulations and statutes in the practice setup.

Scope of Practice for California Nurse Practitioners

For all registered nurses in California, there is a need to keep a close link with BRN so that they get the current guidelines that relate with their practice. California nurses have to observe clearly both the Nursing Practice Act (NPA) and the California Code of Regulations (CCR). The practices of the nurse practitioners are given in NPA under section 2834 as well as the CCR section 1480 (Mikos, 2004; Apold, 2007).

Nursing Practice Act (NPA)

There are clear guidelines regarding the activities that a practicing nurse should engage in as stipulated by the Business and Professions Code, Section 2725 under NPA (Guerry et al., 2005). The legal procedures are explicitly provided for purposes of clarity in this section. NPA authorizes the following:

1. Care services provided by the registered nurses, both direct and indirect, should ensure that the patient achieves utmost comfort, safety, protection, hygiene and deterrence from illnesses.
2. This care services might also involve administering therapies or medications to help patients recover from ailments, prevent those ailments or rehabilitate patients. The most important thing is to comply with the scope covered by the license of the physician under the supervision of whom the nurse is working (Packel et al., 2006).
3. Undertaking of immunizations, skin tests and withdrawing of patient blood from either the arteries or the veins.
4. Observing the prognosis of the patient i.e., reactions to medications, the signs and symptoms of the diseases and also starting emergence procedures when necessary.

California Code of Regulations (CCR)

Partin (2006) in his journal outlines the following stipulations as provided by CCR:

1. A nurse practitioner must be registered with BRN and have some supplementary skills that equip him or her in the areas of psychosocial assessment, physical diagnosis, primary healthcare management of illnesses. The nurse must also come from a preparatory body that goes in line with the guidelines of CCR, section 1484 i.e., the standards of education.
2. The nurse practitioner should be in a position to take up the accountabilities and responsibilities that come with the healthcare management irrespective of whether the illness has been stopped or is still present. This is given under CCR 1480 (b).
3. Practicing nurses in California must possess the clinical competence that is expected of professionals in clinical practice, may it be in terms of skill, learning or care. These provisions are given under CCR 1480 (c).
4. There is no further scope of practice for nurse practitioners which surpass the Registered Nurse (RN) scope. Consequently, NP depends on standardized course of action in carrying out those medical tasks that overlap. CCR section 1485 deals with this issue.

Conclusion

The scope of practice for a California nurse practitioner is regulated by the Board of Registered Nursing which ensures that the practicing nurses observe Nursing Practice Act (NPA) and California Code of Regulations (CCR). The governing body and the two authorization entities warrant that NPs are able to work within the level of training and education they have achieved. Importantly, they safeguard the benefits of patients while making certain that California NPs do not incur liability or charges as a result of malpractices or operating without licenses.

References

Apold, S. (2007). Fighting the Scope of Practice Partnership. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 3(2), 72-72.

Considine, J., Martin, R., Smit, D., Jenkins, J., & Winter, C. (2006). Defining the Scope of Practice of the Emergency Nurse Practitioner Role in a Metropolitan Emergency Department. International Journal of Nursing Practice, 12(4), 205-213.

Guerry, S. L., Bauer, H. M., Packel, L., Samuel, M., Chow, J., Rhew, M. (2005). Chlamydia Screening and Management Practices of Primary Care Physicians and Nurse Practitioners in California. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 20(12), 1102-1107.

Mikos, C. A. (2004). Inside The Nurse Practice Act. Nursing Management (Springhouse), 35(9), 20-22.

Packel, L. J., Guerry, S., Bauer, H. M., Rhew, M., Chow, J., Samuel, M. (2006). Patient-Delivered Partner Therapy for Chlamydial Infections: Attitudes and Practices of California Physicians and Nurse Practitioners. Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 33(7), 458-463.

Partin, B. (2006). Who, if not you, will determine NP Scope of Practice?. The Nurse Practitioner, 31(2), 6.