Nurse Practitioners provide more than 192,000 solutions to the health care crisis

Nurse Practitioners provide more than 192,000 solutions to the health care crisis

National Nurse Practitioner Week celebrated November 9-15

Cumming, GA (11/9/14). As newly insured patients seek access to health care, it is important that the public be aware that there are more than 192,000 nurse practitioners (NPs) in the United States who provide high quality, cost-effective, comprehensive, patient centered-care to patients nationwide.

NPs are licensed, expert clinicians with advanced education (most have master’s and many have doctorate degrees) and extensive clinical preparation who provide primary, acute and specialty health care services. In addition to providing a full range of services, NPs work as partners with their patients, guiding them to make educated health care decisions and healthy lifestyle choices. The confidence that patients have in NP-delivered health care is evidenced by the more than 916 million visits made to NPs every year.

National Nurse Practitioner Week, November 9-15, 2014, is a time to celebrate these exceptional health care providers and to remind lawmakers of the importance of removing outdated barriers to practice so that NPs will be allowed to practice to the full extent of their experience and education so that patients are allowed full and direct access to all the services NPs are educated and certified to provide. Nurse Practitioners are informed, in touch and involved, making them the health care providers of choice for millions and a solution to the primary health care crisis in America.