Nurse Practice Act: A Guide to Nursing Actions and Standards

Health Care Administration:
Nurse Practice Act

Introduction
•Nurses are the true harbingers of ensuring
positive health outcomes in patients.
•Hence, nurses require considerable skill,
knowledge, experiential learning and
professional practice to administer
nursing action with safety and security.
•However, the risks associated with nursing
are high, considering the unpredictable
nature of disease outcomes and
medication consequences.
•Nurse Practice Act (NPA) aims to set
standards of safety and governance of
nursing action to ensure compliance to
changing community needs (Russell,
2017).

History of the Nurse Practice Act
• During the Industrial Revolution treatment of
individuals majorly comprised of community
and family care.
• A number of such healthcare communities
emerged, practicing healthcare without any set
quality standards.
• Thus, the states undertook the responsibility to
formulate nurse standards, licensures, practice
quality and legislations.
• The role of a Nursing Licensure is to ensure
compliance uniformity and compliance
between states on the standards and
qualifications of nursing practice (Hartigan,
2016).

Nurses Guide to Action
• Every state has a NPA, which seeks to
guide, govern and legislate nursing
actions.
• Healthcare administrative laws and
actions must be compliant with the NPA.
The NPA is regulated by the Board of
Nursing (BON).
• Despite variance in NPA across states,
every state’s NPA must maintain some
uniformity in terms of basic requirements.
• These basic requirements include:
definitions of a nurse, composition of a
BON, standards of nursing education,
scope of nursing practice, nursing
licensure and criteria for disciplinary
actions (Ballard et al., 2016).