Abstract
The essentials of Master’s Education in Nursing at the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) focuses on the continuous call to creative thinking and change in graduate education. Master’s Degree is expected to prepare nurses for the effective leadership and critical action by equipping with necessary knowledge and skills. The combination of nine essentials reveals several roles and settings, in which the graduates would operate, but not necessarily encounter in their practice. Instead, these essentials provide the fundamental overview of the advanced nursing practice. The mastery area and these essentials, in particular, present a valuable trajectory for nursing leaders.
Introduction
The master’s degree programs in nursing are aimed to address several issues and lead change to enhance health care delivery quality. In order to achieve the mentioned goals, nine essentials that were developed by AACN present guidance to nurses, leading them on the path of advancing a culture of excellence based on the evidence-based decisions along with the integration of care services.
Body
The composition of nine essentials presents skills that are received by every nurse prepared in master’s nursing programs. Essential I: Background for Practice from Sciences and Humanities outlines that nurses integrate knowledge from different areas related to health care that is rather important to properly examine a patient. For example, nursing leaders cover biopsychosocial fields, public health, genetics, quality improvement, and other corresponding fields (“Chamberlain College of Nursing”, 2016).
Essential II: Organizational and Systems Leadership emphasizes the role of leadership organization in ensuring ethics, appropriate relationships and communication between staff members and patients, and also the systems-perspective. The above essential seems to be significant to direct and motivate others to perform their work effectively.
Essential III: Quality Improvement and Safety states that a nurse should prioritize quality by means of applying and connecting various tools, strategies, methods, and principles within the organization. This essential helps to arrange the existing instruments, thus making them clear and accessible to staff members.
According to Essential IV: Translating and Integrating Scholarship into Practice, a master’s prepared nurse is expected to transform theory and evidence into practice through harnessing researcher’s enthusiasm and developing research skills continuously (McCleary-Jones et al., 2013). The key value of this essential is that it helps to resolve practical problems and subsequently disseminate the results.
Essential V: Informatics and Healthcare Technologies by the very definition propose the use of modern technologies to coordinate care and interact with staff. The role of the fifth essential cannot be overestimated, taking into account that the modern ever-changing world is closely associated with technology. Utilizing patient-centered innovations, a nurse achieves the most productive care leadership.
Essential VI: Health Policy and Advocacy implies that master’s prepared nurse may apply advocacy strategies to impact policy and act as the patients’ advocate, thus taking care of patients’ rights. In nowadays nursing, an important role is assigned not only to the treatment of diseases, but also to their prevention and early prognosis (“The essentials of master’s education in nursing”, 2011). The development of the coordination tools is also beneficial for nursing leadership as it facilitates the processes of communication and integration between different areas.
Essential VII: Interprofessional Collaboration for Improving Patient and Population Health Outcomes proposes the collaboration with other health care experts in the role of a leader and a representative of the interprofessional team. This results in the appropriate health care maintenance and coordination.
Essential VIII: Clinical Prevention and Population Health for Improving Health embraces planning, management, and assessment processes in the context of patient-centered care with the attention to the cultural peculiarities. Prevention is one of the most vital provisions of nowadays health care delivery services as it is better to prevent disease by following the relatively simple measures such as changing lifestyle rather than treating the diseases (“Master’s essentials tool kit”, 2017). In this connection, the mentioned essential can be appraised as the one that provides the basis for the prevention initiatives.
Essential IX: Master’s-Level Nursing Practice offers the definition and the extensive explanation of master’s degree in nursing, pointing out that the core role is given to the intervention with the aim of improving health care status of persons, communities, and systems (McCleary-Jones et al., 2013). At this point, the advanced level of awareness of planning, evaluation, and intervention is required for master’s prepared nurses, involving the direct and indirect care perspectives. Such a broad interpretation of master’s level nursing practice provides insights into the essence of this profession, clarifying what it strives to pursue.
Conclusion
To conclude, it is necessary to pinpoint that the advanced nursing practice and Master’s Education in Nursing, in particular, aim at transforming health care services to adjust them to the modern requirements along with increasing quality and implementing corresponding tools, methods, and strategies. The essentials that were described and interpreted in this paper show that master’s prepared nurses acquire advanced knowledge and skills to integrate interprofessional team and coordinate care delivery. These essentials outline the expected outcomes as well as their value to both nursing theory and practice. Summing it up, one may note that the essentials propose creative thinking, evidence-based action, and continuous professional development to remain competent in the conditions of the changing environment.
References
Chamberlain College of Nursing. (2016)
Master’s essentials tool kit. (2017)
McCleary-Jones, V., Smith, P., Carithers, C., Craft, M., Forsythe, L., Kupperschmidt, B.,… Weatherby, F. (2013). Collaboration in the face of change: A successful graduate curriculum revision. Journal of Nursing Education and Practice, 4(1), 33-41.
The essentials of master’s education in nursing. (2011).