ROLE PERCEPTIONS OF EXPERIENCED NURSE PRACTITIONERS: A CONFIGURATION OF INDIVIDUAL AND INSTITUTIONAL ROLES.
Contributors: University of California, San Francisco.
Published: 1988
Number of pages: 174
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Approximately 25,000 nurse practitioners currently work in the United States in multiple locations and areas of specialization. The nurse practitioner role has been intensively studied from its mid-1960s inception to the present day and is considered by many as the prototype clinical nursing role. Defining this role has been problematic, however, for nurse practitioners, consumers, and others in the health care professions.

Disparate role perceptions can be explained by shifting role boundaries, overlapping health worker functions, differing role autonomy perceptions, and methodologic limitations of nurse practitioner research that has been focused on students and novice clinicians rather than experienced nurse practitioners.

The study purpose was to explore and describe the role definitions and perceptions of experienced nurse practitioners. Questions were addressed concerning role descriptions, problems in role delineation, and the identification of factors influencing role definitions.

The study design was exploratory and descriptive. Field and grounded theory methodologies were employed in data collection and analysis. Twenty-three nurse practitioners with two or more years of nurse practitioner experience were informally interviewed. The study participants were employed in three organizational settings and were specialized in the areas of medicine, obstetrics, or gynecology.

Two disparate roles were identified by the study participants. The individually desired role, delineated by professional nurse identity, professional autonomy, and activity integration was the ideal role. In contrast, the institutionally expected role, characterized by medical associated identity, decreased professional autonomy, and diminished activity integration, was the requisite nurse practitioner role.

Role disparity was influenced by a number of contextual factors that included: temporal factors, role comprehension, role ambiguity, interactional mode, and interprofessional control. The study participants utilized strategies to reduce or accommodate to role disparity that included: role negotiation, role optioning, role compromising, role re-routing, and role exiting.

All study participants engaged in the central process of role blending, a continual process of individually desired and institutionally expected role amalgamation. The configuration of blended roles varied according to the contextual factors that influenced role disparity and individual strategy utilization.

Study implications for nurse practitioners, nursing administrators and educators were identified and discussed.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-04, Section: B, page: 1092.

Thesis (D.N.S.)--UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO, 1988.

School code: 0034.