Overview
Instruction: Respond to your colleagues' posts by sharing your thoughts on their specialty, supporting their choice or offering suggestions if they have yet to choose.
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions For my future as a nurse practitioner, I am still in debate regarding specialty. Most of my background is in primary care, so that is a clear choice for me due to my heart and background being in it, but having dabbled in orthopedics and hospital work, this sometimes calls me. Another specialty that calls to me is pediatrics, since my rotation in pediatrics for clinicals in nursing school, but this could be intertwined with primary care with a nurse practitioner, so another reason to pursue that route. There are a lot of options and decisions to be made, but that is the beauty of the nursing profession, the options are ENDLESS (Poghosya,et al., 2023). The profession is an everchanging one and more options and jobs become available within the profession as time progresses and there is no end in sight, this is what drew me to the nursing profession and the nurse practitioner field is no different (DePriest, et al.,2020). Variety is the spice of life, and this profession is the definition of variety, due to the copious number of options of specialty, field, hands-on, telemedicine, and ages capable of receiving care. Having too many choices and making a final decision has never been my specialty, luckily with this program through our internships, we can see the flow and care being provided in different aspects of healthcare to assist with my big decision. Professional Organizations Among nurse practitioners, there are so many different options of professional organizations to join to increase knowledge and gain a networking system. Some organizations can fall under every specialty and then ones that are broader of an organization, such as the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP), which is the largest collection of nurse practitioners. This professional organization allows nurse practitioners (NP) to meet, collaborate, and learn new information to take back to practice, as a nurse practitioner, you can join for an annual fee and a simple registration form (AANP.org, 2025). Once a member, this allows for certain benefits and discounts throughout the NP realm, they even have a student membership that I joined to see what it is all about (AANP.org,2021-2025). They offer annual conferences and assist NPs in renewing their licenses and providing access to continuing education units (CEUs).
Please utilize attached source for reference.
- Bickford, C. J., Marion, L., & Gazaway, S. (2015). Nursing: Scope and standards of practice, third edition - 2015Links to an external site.. Retrieved from http://ebooks.iospress.nl/publication/12524
- Echevarria, I. M. (2018). Make connections by joining a professional nursing organizationLinks to an external site.. Nursing, 48(12), 35–38.
- Cherry, B., Caramanica, L, Everett, L. Q., Fennimore, L., & Elaine, S. (2019).Leveraging the power of board leadership in professional nursing organizationsLinks to an external site.. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 49(11), 517-519.