Report of the Consortium for Quality Nurse Practitioner Education to AFPNP

March 2002

The Consortium met during this past year with a combination of meetings and conference calls. NONPF, AFPNP, NCBPNP/N, AACN, ANCC, AANP, NCC, and NPWHAC continue to be represented. Progress reports from the group have been provided to the Alliance at their biannual meetings in Washington. Both CCNE and NLNAC continued to welcome members of the Consortium at scheduled accreditation site visits. The role of the Consortium member on these teams has been as an observer. The purpose has been to review the accreditation process as it is currently structured to see if the accreditors are able to gather adequate information about the NP tracts in order to make a decision based on the National Task Force Criteria. This review is enhanced for the pediatric and women's health nurse practitioner programs by the existence of specific competencies. It is expected that the recent work to arrive at agreed competencies for family nurse practitioners, adult nurse practitioners, and geriatric nurse practitioners will expedite their review in the near future. Concern remains over some of the newer nurse practitioner specialty groups who may still be without standardized competencies.

Members of the consortium shared their observations following these visits and have agreed that there is good reason to urge both CCNE and NLNAC to adopt these guidelines in their process of accreditation of MSN Programs with NP programs. It is anticipated that the availability of accepted universal competencies that are specialty specific will remove a significant past stumbling block. It was agreed by members of the Consortium who made site visits that the necessary information is available to reviewers during these visits should they choose to use it. (Course syllabi were noted to be particularly informative!)

Reaction to the White Paper of the Consortium for Quality Nurse Practitioner Education distributed a year ago continues to be positive. I recently received a letter from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing who voted to endorse the White Paper following the recommendation of the Advanced Practice Task Force. The National Council Board of Directors "commended the Consortium on its efforts to promote national educational standards for accreditation... endorsing the White Paper represents moving toward assurance that appropriate standards are enforced and maintained..." and congratulated the Consortium "on its excellent work."

Members of the Consortium have been heartened by such responses. While we would all like to see these important issues of accreditation and program review resolved quickly and easily, we know that these topics are too important to the profession and to the public for us not to persevere in our efforts.......In the meantime we know that both NLNAC and CCNE need to hear from their constituents (that means faculty and public) about the continued importance of their adoption of uniform standards of Nurse Practitioner education in their process of accreditation.

I look forward to seeing many of you in Reno and would be happy to discuss these issues with you.