Title: Meaningful Education for Quality Healthcare Practice: Bringing Advanced Practice to a new level

Biography:

Patricia Seabrooks, PhD, ARNP-BC is a Dean of Nursing in  Miami Regional College (School of Nursing) from March 2017 to March 2019

Abstract

• Educating and training foreign trained physicians (FTP’s), other professional healthcare providers or therapists to become professional nurses and/or advanced practice nurses provide a successful method to populate the health professional man power shortage areas.  These skilled professionals tend to learn the art and science of nursing, particularly the skills at a rapid pace.  It takes longer to change attitudes and behaviors related to the theories that underpin nursing practice and the limitations on advanced practice when the new student in nursing was once the “captain” of the ship and wrote the “orders” for nurses to follow and now, realizing that nursing is its own profession and works with other health care professionals to provide the quality care that the clients need, deserve and expect. There are several programs for FTP’s in the US. It is common that the students in these nursing programs believe that they do not really need the education, just the license.  However, when asked nursing questions or when testing on nursing content, they do not always perform as well as they expect. It does not take long for the motivated FTP to accept the idea of “thinking like a nurse” to experience success in the course work and on the national examinations.  Faculty and managers must take into consideration that the scope of practice for professional nursing and advanced practice nursing maybe unknown to these new professionals. 

• The curriculum must be designed to focus on the desired health care outcomes for the program and then work on the student level expected course outcomes, which will evoke the program level outcomes.  The program must meet necessary standards for successful accreditation and maintenance by the appropriate organizations.

• This Presentation discusses the development and implementation of such a nursing program that  responded to the shortage of nursing, as well as, the lack of living wages of an immigrant group of FTP’s in a large diverse metropolitan community and educates approximately 300 FTP’s yearly to become registered nurses and then to become family nurse  practitioners.

• The advantages of this program are the reduction of the nurse shortage in the community, the improvement of the living conditions of the FTP’s who complete the program and the improvement of access to health care by a diverse community when the new advanced practice registered nurse accept positions in the community or create practice sites within the community.