Epidemiology Affecting Nurse Practitioners

Epidemiology, the study of illnesses and how they spread, is an important issue for nurse practitioners. A nurse practitioner is someone with an APN, or Advanced Practice Nursing, degree. Nurse practitioners work in a similar capacity to doctors, able to write prescriptions and order tests in some states, which means that nurse practitioners can be the top staff member at clinics and other places where people with communicable diseases are in large number.

Significance

• Legislators in up to 28 states are considering expanding the abilities of nurse practitioners in seeing patients. This change comes as many states face a shortage of physicians, especially in family practice. Nurse practitioners then would be able to work without the supervision of doctors.

Public Health Model

• Nurse practitioners are becoming more common in public health settings, which puts them in contact with patients, largely from low-income neighborhoods, who have highly communicable illnesses. The goal of these programs is to educate about the epidemiology of illness, trying to help reduce the instance of these illnesses, rather than simply treating the patients once they are sick.

Benefits

• The cost to use nurse practitioners can be lower for the same work. While that situation is not good for nurse practitioners, it does grant people with no or poor insurance the option to see a medical provider before becoming gravely ill. Higher instances of seeing practitioners can help reduce illness.