Ethical Education in the Advanced Practice Role

Advanced practice nurses have a special significance, new responsibilities, and outstanding opportunities in the present-day healthcare landscape. They have advanced knowledge, skills, competence, and experience, which they use to enhance the provision of high-quality healthcare services. The practitioners are tasked with understanding and delivering evidence-based practices while addressing distinct patient cadres and myriad illnesses (Vermeesch et al., 2018). However, this expanded scope of practice is not without challenges, most of which are ethical in nature. Ethical challenges easily result from complex interactions, which in this case is within a hospital setting where practitioners are expected to uphold various ethical principles such as respect for patient autonomy. Navigating through these complex domains requires an adept understanding of ethics and its implications in practice (Hoskins et al., 2018). Therefore, ethical education must be a requirement in the advanced nursing practice. It is important for the nursing profession to be obligated to expeditiously prepare all nurse practitioners for the ethical morass that characterizes today’s clinical practice. It must seek to provide high-quality ethics pedagogy as a key component of nursing education.

There is a direct correlation between the increase in the scope of practice in nursing and improved adherence to established ethical principles, standards, and guidelines. According to the International Council of Nurses, changing the scope of practice should be driven by the desire to better address the needs of patients or populations at large. Note that patients and their loved ones need to be assured that a practitioner can provide unbiased and high-quality healthcare services that result in optimal outcomes and satisfaction. As an advanced nurse practitioner, it is my responsibility to make ethical and evidence-based decisions for better patient outcomes. With this understanding, ethics will play a major role in influencing clinical or other decision-making. I believe I am optimally prepared for this adventure given my advanced education and training, personal beliefs and values, and the understanding of the essence of maintaining professionalism in practice.