Reflective Essay on Doctor of Nursing Practice

Running head: REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON DOCTOR OF NURSING PRACTICE
Reflective Essay on Doctor of Nursing Practice
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REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON DOCTOR OF NURSING PRACTICE
Introduction:
The profession of nursing is expanding rapidly and along with the innovative
infrastructural improvements, the academic degrees for qualification for the nurses is
expanding rapidly as well. There are various educational advancements occurring in the
nursing curriculum, with each of the degrees having specific roles and attributes in the
clinical practice. In this reflective essay, I would attempt to discuss the implications for
Doctor of Nursing Practice for the nurses taking the assistance of 5 high quality research
evidences.
Discussion:
As discussed by Newland (2015), DNP refers to the Doctor of Nursing practice
degree, designed specifically to prepare the nurses to become experts in the nursing practice.
It has to be mentioned that the DNP is considered as the pinnacle of clinical practice as an
extremely focussed nursing degree that builds upon the master’s program in nursing. The
authors describe DNP to be a curriculum that provides the nurses with educational foundation
which focuses intricately on the quality improvement, evidence based practice, systems
thinking and effective leadership. With respect to the history of the degree, as discussed by
Carollo and Mason (2017), in the year of 2004, the American Association of Colleges of
Nursing (AACN), declared and endorsed “Position Statement on the Practice Doctorate
in Nursing”. This had been the first step towards the establishment of this degree, and
gradually, all the related nursing education authorities and organizations voted for the
educational level to transition from a master’s degree to a doctor of nursing practice. Within
the year of 2015, the DNP became the terminal degree in the USA for nursing education for
all advanced practice registered nurses.
The current state of the academic degree is growing rapidly; as discussed by Redman
et al. (2015), the number of nursing schools and institutions that are providing DNP