National Healthcare Quality Week: 3 Reasons to Celebrate Nurse Practitioners This NHQW by April N Kapu, DNP, APRN, ACNP-BC, FAANP, FCCM, FAAN

Healthcare Quality Week (NHQW) celebrates the contributions that health-care professionals make to improve health care quality throughout the United States. This NHQW, let’s celebrate nurse practitioners (NPs) and the patients who choose them. The nation’s 325,000 NPs deliver high-quality health care in more than 1 billion patient visits each year. Here are just a few of the reasons to consider choosing an NP for your health care:

• Emphasis on Comprehensive Health and Wellness: NPs are proactive health-care providers who help patients develop a healthier lifestyle through long-term habits, rather than just treating symptoms. NPs provide health education that improves patient outcomes. One study found that NPs are more likely to ask questions and consider factors related to symptoms their patients were experiencing than other providers. By completing comprehensive assessments of their patients, including physical, mental and emotional factors that contribute to health, NPs understand and promote patient wellness.
  

• Coordination of Multiple Aspects of Patient Care: NPs maintain involvement with their patients throughout their health journey, beginning with understanding and assessing the patient’s concerns and evaluating the contributing factors of their health conditions. NPs then educate their patients when discussing treatment plans and follow up with their patients throughout the treatment process. It’s no wonder that NPs are particularly effective at helping patients manage chronic conditions, like diabetes.

• Reduction in Patient Hospital Visits: Research shows that patients who choose NPs as their health-care providers visit the emergency room less frequently, experience fewer preventable hospitalizations and have shorter hospital stays when hospitalization is required.

NPs deliver the high-quality care that patients choose and America needs. To learn more about high-quality, NP-delivered health care, visit WeChooseNPs.org.

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