Family Nurse Practitioner

The Family Nurse Practitioner acquires a broad base of knowledge and experience to provide direct health care services to people of all ages for the purposes of health promotion, health protection, disease prevention, and management of common acute and chronic illnesses. The Family Nurse Practitioner focuses on care of patients and families and functions primarily in ambulatory care settings. The population in primary care family practice includes newborns, infants, children, adolescents, pregnant and postpartum women, adults and the elderly. There are a total of 42 credit hours in the specialty with 665 clinical hours.

The Family Nurse Practitioner graduate is prepared to:

1. Synthesize knowledge from nursing theories, the humanities, and evidence-based scientific clinical guidelines to guide assessment of health status for patients of all ages.
2. Demonstrate advanced practice clinical decision making, integrating critical thinking, to interpret patient and diagnostic test data and formulate differential diagnoses and a plan of care for patients and families across the lifespan.
3. Design and implement a mutually agreed upon management plan and therapeutic interventions with patients and families across the lifespan.
4. Evaluate and revise the documented management plan based on patient/family findings, problems and expected outcomes of treatment. 
5. Apply family assessment methodologies and research findings to improve and evaluate the care of patients and families across the lifespan.
6. Advocate for patients and families to provide cost-effective, culturally competent, ethical, quality care in and across health care settings.
7. Model responsibility for continued professional development, integrity, accountability, competence and credentialing as a family nurse practitioner.