Novel Roles for Advanced Practice Nursing Related to Emerging Healthcare Trends and Needs Example Solution Leading Through Change

Family Nurse Practice are advanced role nurse practitioners who focus on the family’s health and do not pay attention to specific groups. This advanced nursing practice role requires nurses to have advanced knowledge and skills in various leadership and change management competencies. This essay explores the FNP vision and goals and evaluates leadership and change management skills and strategies required for this role.

The future vision of nursing practice is to ensure healthy families that understand and execute their roles in promoting healthier, stronger, and cohesive families and that easily adapt to changes in health requirements (Marilyn & Vicky, 2019). The goals of FNP based on the FNP competencies and the American Nurses Association are to transform healthcare through leadership skills, collaborate with other healthcare professionals for teamwork and communication. Other goals are to provide culturally sensitive care in research, leadership, practice, and community involvement and create interactive approaches through innovative technology in nursing research, education, and practice (Marilyn & Vicky, 2019).

The healthcare sector is ever-changing, and so are the various patient needs. Coopetition or cooperative competition is an emerging strategy in nursing where institutions focus on learning from others who have succeeded in care provision (Albert-Cromarias & Dos Santos, 2020). This trend has helped curb costs and avoid draining practices whose practices are not proven beneficial. Another trend is the shift to telehealth, which has increased access to healthcare services without disrupting daily activities, thus promoting healthier families with more access to knowledge and healthcare services (Ali et al., 2020). Emerging diseases and conditions are hence changing patient needs. There has been a series of emerging diseases, such as COVID 19 and hantavirus, to which nurse practitioners must prepare families to adapt (Albert-Cromarias & Dos Santos, 2020). As discussed earlier, dealing with these families requires extensive knowledge and cultural sensitivity.

Change in healthcare can be progressive such as adapting to a change in the nursing curriculum or leadership position, or abrupt, such as adapting to acute healthcare conditions in epidemics and disease outbreaks. Healthcare professionals in primary care, such as FNPs, need to adapt to change. Staff education is a vital change management strategy (Torani et al., 2019). Educating staff increases persuasion, delivers logic to the staff, and helps gain buy-in from the involved staff. Evidence-based practices promote better nursing research, education, and practice and hence a well-structured education is a vital tool in gaining buy-in and promoting change management in healthcare.

Shared decision-making through staff involvement in the decision-making process is another effective strategy in decision-making (Amarantou et al., 2018). FNPs should ensure they involve all staff in change. Informing staff is important in ensuring they participate in change. Their involvement also produces high-quality decisions by including all professional perspectives. These decisions thus lead to better outcomes and minimize the resistance and chances of change failure. Comprehensive planning and the development of clear goals and objectives are important in promoting acceptance of a change. Advocating for developing clear objectives and goals by contributing to the ideas using advanced knowledge and skills will significantly influence change management (Vaishnavi et al., 2019). Thus, implementing these strategies will lead to effective change management and smooth hospital running.

Some of the required leadership skills for FNP, according to FNP competencies, are team-playing, decision-making, conflict resolution, time management, and organizational skills (Marilyn et al., 2020). Team playing is important in primary care due to the diverse patient needs utilizing the various professionals. It also ensures collaborative work and thus better patient outcomes. Conflicts arise in teams occasionally, and conflict resolution skills ensure professionals continue to work together in harmony to achieve better patient outcomes. Time is an important resource in nursing practice due to its nature in dealing with human life, and FNPs should be time-sensitive when developing care plans and coordinating care.

Organizational skills are essential for personal and group organizations to ensure all activities are carried out as required. Organization skills help create a better working environment in healthcare an