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Acute Care Nurse Practitioner - Career Profile |
Career OverviewIn medicine, acute care is the treatment of a serious injury or illness. It is also the type of treatment given to a patient recovering from surgery. Although medical conditions that require acute care are typically periodic or temporary in nature, they are serious and acute caregivers have to be extremely alert and well-trained to handle a number of critical conditions. Some of the most common acute or critical conditions are heart attacks, respiratory distress syndrome, shock, and general trauma.
Most acute care nurses work in emergency rooms because of the nature of their expertise. Patients requiring acute care are generally admitted into their local emergency room for immediate treatment.
However, acute care nurses can also work in operating rooms, walk-in clinics, doctor's offices, critical care units, and community care centers that are not affiliated with hospitals.
The primary function of an acute care nurse is to ensure the positive experience of patients with acute conditions. Those who work in hospital emergency rooms generally belong to trauma teams and provide primary care, and performing invasive diagnostic procedures and advanced therapeutic procedures.
Acute care nurse practitioners may also care for pre- and post-operative patients; they may, on the other hand, serve as assistants to case managers, administrators, patient and staff educators, policy-makers, and researchers within the field of acute care.
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Career RequirementsTo be accepted by a nurse-practitioner program, candidates must be registered nurses and hold at least a Bachelor's Degree in nursing from an accredited institution.
Nurse practitioner training programs last between 18 months and 24 months and typically involve both classroom study and clinical training. The classroom instruction is relatively basic, exploring the most basic issues of preventative health care, proper nutrition, and basic anatomy and physiology, because most nurse practitioners have only the most basic exposure to medical theory.
Practitioners who specialize in family health care have experience in general medicine, amounting to usually at least one year's work of supervised clinical experience. Experience is focused on the general care of families, including adults, children, infants, and the elderly.
To serve as an acute care nurse practitioner, candidates usually serve rotations in the various areas of emergency medicine: with the trauma admitting team, in trauma neurosurgery, with acute pain managements services, in plastic and reconstructive surgery, in soft tissue injury and infection surgery, in emergency general surgery, and in trauma orthopedics. Senior staff members supervise the required rotations, which are typically a part of a formalized training program for nurse practitioner interested in specializing in acute care.
Some institutions offer specialist training programs and certification in acute care. More information about training programs and certification is available through the following organization:
American Association of Critical-Care Nurses
101 Columbia,
Aliso Viejo, CA 92656
www.aacn.org
American Academy of Nurse Practitioners
P.O. Box 12846,
Austin, TX 78711
www.aanp.org
American Nurses Credentialing Center
600 Maryland Ave., SW, Suite 100 West
Washington, D.C. 20024-2571
(800) 284-2378
American Nurses' Association
8518 Georgia Ave.,
Ste. 400,
Silver Spring, MD 20910
www.nursingworld.org
The National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties,
National Directory of Nurse Practitioner Programs
1522 K St. NW, Ste. 702,
Washington, DC 20005
www.nonpf.com
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Job OutlookA nurse practitioner who specializes in acute care currently earns more than most other specialist nurses and many estimates suggest that the difference between annual income for acute care nurse practitioners and the annual income of the second highest paid nurses, those who specialize in extended care and psychiatric nursing specialists, has almost doubled in recent years.
As the nature of health care changes over the next decade, it appears that acute care will remain at the forefront. Patients may spend less time in hospital overall, but emergency medicine and acute care, which are one and the same, will certainly remain crucial to patient care overall.
Acute care nurse practitioners have, and will continue to have, ample opportunities to work in emergency rooms as part of trauma teams or in operating rooms alongside surgeons. Their role may become emphasized in the future.
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Career TrackSee Nurse Practitioner
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CompensationSee Nurse Practitioner
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