Nurse Practice Act Power Point Presentation Assignment

Nurse Practice Act Power Point Presentation Assignment

Nurse Practice Act Power Point Presentation Assignment and Grading Rubric

Power Point Format Expectations

It is important that students understand that the legal parameters of APN practice vary tremendously across the United States. Each state has its own laws regarding the scope of practice for APNs. This assignment is to compare the nurse practice acts (or whatever the name of the statute that controls APN practice) −and the accompanying rules for administration for those acts−in two states: the one where you live/work now and another state to be assigned by course faculty shortly after the semester has begun. You are to develop a detailed and scholarly PowerPoint presentation that adheres to APA format for any references, as well as the standard rules of spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. Bullet point format should be used for most slides; in other words, few slides should have full paragraphs. However, there should be enough detail in the entire presentation that anyone reading the slides would have the answers to the questions below—but copying lengthy sections of a statute should be avoided. Excellent summarizing and paraphrasing—rather than just copying and pasting whole sections of a statute—is actually encouraged. Side-by-side comparison of information can be effective, assuming the slide is not too “busy.”

Nurse Practice Act Power Point Presentation Assignment

 

 

 

Background Information about State Regulations

Please note that you must actually read the practice acts and the accompanying rules of the states assigned. But the good news is that the language about APN practice is usually located in a single, identifiable section of each act; therefore, you may focus on only the part of the acts specific to advanced practice nurses. I have noted elsewhere that you should not rely on the summaries done by Carolyn Buppert in our textbook simply because in any given year a state may change its act. The Nurse Practitioner Journal article, 28th annual legislative update:  Advancements continue for APRN practice can be helpful, although again any statute might have been revised since that article was published. The article can be found on the course home page under articles, videos and power-points for weekly assignments.

Finally, there is yet another resource for this assignment, which is provided by Barton Associates, which is a locum tenens staffing company. This site was discovered by one of our students who took NURS 610 previously. Below is the link for a very interesting color-coded diagram indicating the various elements of practice acts for all of the states and Washington, D.C. This may not be up to date.

http://www.bartonassociates.com/nurse-practitioners/nurse-practitioner-scope-of-practice-laws/

While the references are instructive in terms of the frameworks of nurse practice acts in different states, you still must still read the actual statutes and rules of the both states.

The accompanying rules for administration are often contained in an entirely different document from the practice act itself. What is the difference between statutes and rules? The statute is the law passed by the each state’s legislature; it is usually more general in its verbiage and is comparable to a policy. Rules, on the other hand, are written by government employees in the state agency/regulatory body and are much more specific like procedures.

Locating the practice acts for each state can be tricky: Some states have an actual governmental agency called the Board of Nursing; however, in other states, the “Board of Nursing” is simply an advisory committee comprised of volunteer members–which is true in Illinois. Illinois, like a few other states, has a “mega-agency” that regulates professionals in a whole host of professions. Illinois’ regulatory agency has the title of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) and oversees not just health professionals, but wrestlers, hairdressers, real estate agents, bankers, and the list goes on and on. Then there are some states that regulate nurses through their state departments of health. However, there are two resources listed on your syllabus that should be helpful:

National Council of State Boards of Nursing: https://www.ncsbn.org/index.htm

State Nurses Associations: http://www.theagapecenter.com/Organizations/State-Nursing.htm

Once again, do not rely on Buppert for information about these state agencies, since the information about Illinois and many other states is not correct. The Advanced Practice Nursing Board in Illinois merged with the “regular” Board of Nursing (that oversees the practices of registered nurses and licensed practical nurses) in 2007 and, as I noted above, is only a voluntary board that advises the staff of IDFPR. The final authority for the practice of any professional licensed by IDFPR is the Secretary of the Department.

Nurse Practice Act Power Point Presentation Assignment

Formatting Statutes and Regulations

Do not be overly anxious regarding citations and references for the Nurse Practice Act PowerPoint presentation. Even the APA manual admits that its source for proper citation and reference format is based on another source; namely, the “Bluebook.” Nurse practice acts are statutes and their format is discussed on p. 220-221 in the APA manual. On the top of the page on 221 in the APA manual, a format for a reference is provided; however, that format may not be very helpful for the particular practice acts that you are comparing. Remember, that the real purpose of citations and references is to help the reader to find original sources if so desired. For example, the full legal “name” of the Illinois Nurse Practice Act is this: 225 Illinois Compiled Statutes 65/60-1 — 65/75-20 (FYI: You MAY abbreviate Illinois Compiled Statutes as ILCS).

While the information focuses on how the Illinois Nurse Practice Act works, I hope the gist of this makes sense for all states, even though other states may have a somewhat different way of “naming” their acts. In Illinois the majority of information about advanced practice nursing can be found under Article 65 within which there are several sections like this:

65/65-5: Qualifications for APN licensure. The first “65” refers to the “name” of the act and it just so happens that the APN section is also Article 65. The “5” after the dash refers to a particular section within Article 65.

The next section of Article 65 is:

65/65-10: APN license pending status. And this section is followed by:

65/65-15: Expiration of APN license renewal. ….etc.

This is how you should begin this assignment. Early in your PowerPoint presentation, I would like you to indicate the “names” of the two acts that you are comparing, as I did with the Illinois Nurse Practice Act above (ILCS Compiled Statutes 65/60-1 — 65/75-20)…or how the acts you are comparing are legally “named.” Once you provide the legal names of both practice acts in your presentation, you do not have to refer to that name anywhere else in the presentation (not even at the end). BUT I would like to see citations on the slides as you address the various elements of the grading rubric.

So, in Illinois, for example, when you describe the scope of practice of an APN, you would note somewhere on the slide that you obtained that information from § 65-30 (§ is the symbol for section). And you should make that citation in much smaller (but readable) font than the rest of the text on the slide. By the way, the easiest way to get that section symbol into your presentation is probably to go into Microsoft Word, find the “insert” tab in the top toolbar, find the “symbol” icon (in my version of Word, it is the last option on the right), and find the symbol, which seems to be in the category of “Basic Latin,” and just copy and paste that symbol into a slide. Once you do that, you should be able to just copy and paste that symbol from one slide to another.  Due to space constraints some liberties must be taken with APA format; But you do owe the reader enough information so that he or she could find the source of the information for each slide if so desired.

Nurse Practice Act Power Point Presentation Assignment

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