Transforming Roles of Nursing Professional Development Practitioners.

Until spring 2023, nurses in professional development did not have terminal degree options tailored to their needs. In response, The Ohio State University College of Nursing launched the Doctor of Nursing Education (DNE) program with two tracks: academic nurse educator and nursing professional development (NPD). This program addresses the national shortage of doctorally prepared nurse educators and prepares graduates to lead educational change. This article describes the curriculum and leadership focus of the NPD track of the DNE program, aligned with the Association for Nursing Professional Development scope and standards of practice (2022). It highlights four capstone projects implemented by NPD practitioners in health care settings. Students conducted evidence-based, quality improvement, and program evaluation projects that improved clinical teaching, nurse certification, interdisciplinary collaboration, and new graduate nurse mentoring. These NPD projects highlight the transformative impact of the DNE program, illustrating how doctoral education drives meaningful improvements in health care practice across diverse settings.

In the nursing professional development (NPD) specialty, the NPD practice model visually represents the NPD scope of practice and reflects a growing, vibrant specialty. It delineates the who, what, when, why, where, and how of the specialty practice and is approved by the American Nurses Association. This column reflects upon the evolution of the NPD practice model and delineates its updates in the fourth edition of the Nursing Professional Development: Scope and Standards of Practice.

In a quantitative study to determine nursing professional development (NPD) practitioners' self-perceived influence, influence was operationally defined as political skill. A sample of 989 NPD practitioners reported high-average overall levels of political skill. For those without formal leadership positions, networking ability, a subscale of political skill, was predicted by NPD certification and a graduate degree or higher. NPD practitioners can enhance their influence competency through education, certification, professional development, mentoring, and coaching.

Since its publication in 2016, the third edition of Nursing Professional Development: Scope and Standards of Practice has generated excitement for the specialty. The scope and standards has promoted uniformity of title, stimulated changes in position descriptions, fostered adherence to scope of practice, and served as a unifying framework for system-wide nursing professional development departments. However, continued action is required in the areas of advocacy, research, and engagement with the specialty organization.

Graduate nursing education programs' focus on preparation for academia results in many graduate nurses being unprepared to function as nursing professional development (NPD) practitioners in the practice environment. This article describes the development of an innovative collaborative partnership designation program and how a specialty organization, health system, and academia partnered to create an educational program to prepare NPD practitioners. The designation program provides a practical tool for use by NPD departments to advocate for the NPD specialty.

A common question nursing professional development (NPD) practitioners ask is, "How many NPD practitioners should my organization have?" This study examined correlations among facility size and structure, NPD practitioner characteristics and time in service, and organizational outcomes. Organizations with a higher rate of NPD full-time equivalents per bed had higher patient satisfaction with nurses' communication and provision of discharge instruction on their HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Provider and Systems) scores.

As the new graduate nurse transitions from academia to practice, they commit to lifelong learning to enhance their professional and personal growth. This article provides a comparison between bachelor of science in nursing and associate degree nursing nurses who participated in a multisite national nurse residency program between 2015 and 2019 in areas of professional development, leadership, and academic progression during their initial 3 years of practice. It also provides nursing professional development practitioners with strategies from two national experts to support new graduate nurses during early practice.

In 2021, the Association for Nursing Professional Development commissioned a national study to examine relationships between nursing professional development (NPD) staffing and organizational outcomes and to compare NPD staffing in pediatric and adult hospitals. This report compares data from children's and adult hospitals, which indicate that children's hospitals, in general, have significantly more staffing resources, including NPD practitioners. Insufficient data were obtained to examine relationships between NPD staffing in children's hospitals and organizational outcomes.

4C The Comfort Wheel: An Interactive Case Study Tool for Pain Education

This article, the fourth part of the educational design series, addresses how nursing professional development practitioners can meet educational design criterion 4 in the American Nurses Credentialing Center primary accreditation process and standards 4 and 5 in the Association for Nursing Professional Development Nursing Professional Development: Scope and Standards of Practice. J Contin Educ Nurs. 2018;49(4):148-150.

Science, applications, and regulation

The continuing professional development of nurses remains a key issue within the health context. The Questionnaire - Professional Development Nurses (Q-PDN) was developed to understand the opinions and beliefs of nurses regarding continuing professional development is essential to improving the quality of care and optimizing job satisfaction. With this in mind, researchers from the Netherlands developed the Questionnaire – Professional Development Nurses (Q-PDN). Adapt the Q-PDN to a French-Canadian context according to recognized guidelines. The six stages of the Beaton et al. (2000) cross-cultural adaptation process were followed to produce a tool adapted to the French-Canadian context. This study describes the different steps necessary for the cross-cultural adaptation of the Q-PDN tool to the French-Canadian context. Following the adaptation, minor content adjustments were made to the original version. General comments have highlighted the clarity and simplicity of the questionnaire. This first step in the cross-cultural French-Canadian adaptation of Q-PDN has enabled the development of a tool to identify gaps and priorities for action to promote the continuing professional development (CPD) of nurses.

Putting Together the Puzzle for Professional Development

This article shares an updated structure for school nurse evaluation using the School Nursing Practice Framework and the fourth edition of the School Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice. This evaluation structure is modeled on work originally published in the January 2020 issue of NASN School Nurse. The original linking of the Framework for 21st Century School Nursing Practice and the 3rd edition of the School Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice allowed the school nurse and their evaluators to understand the complex roles and responsibilities of the school nurse. This updated version incorporates the growing understanding of social issues and complex health concerns impacting school nursing practice. The School Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice (4th ed.) competencies recognize issues including emerging technologies, structural barriers to health, and the complex health needs of students in an environment of inequities, violence, and underfunding, as well as the impact of natural disasters, public health crises, human migration, and social media on students. The updated School Nursing Practice Framework (Framework) likewise incorporates an understanding of the foundational aspect of the standards and the interconnectedness of the key principles. Our revised evaluation tool accomplishes the integration of the revised Framework with the updated standards of school nursing practice.

This paper aimed at highlighting the importance of Clinical Nursing Research (CNR) in the professional development of Nursing. CNR often involve patient-oriented research, epidemiologic and behavioural studies, outcomes and health services research. These are all essential in today’s political and societal health care environment with growing shifts and disconnects in patients’ care, and the need for availability of human, material and financial resources required in meeting the health care needs. These and many more require the best available evidence, which could be acquired through CNR. However to achieve the benefits of CNR for professional development, Challenges including low quality research by new and inexperienced researchers; non-availability of research findings to nurses in the practice sectors; inability to identify and work on priority areas needed to improve practice; poor collaboration among researchers and inability to integrate research into practice should be addressed. The key to building and sustaining successful programmes in CNR and evidence-based practice could involve the ground work of establishing forums and structures such as research units in health institutions where discussions and activities about the processes for research and evidence-based practice could be promoted.