Key Messages
Key Message #1
NPs are clinicians with advanced training who provide primary, acute and specialty healthcare services.
Supporting Points
- An NP has a graduate degree with advanced education and clinical training.
- All NPs must complete a master’s or doctoral degree program.
NPs provide a full range of services such as:
- Ordering, performing, supervising, and interpreting diagnostic tests such as lab work and x‐rays;
- Diagnosing and treating acute and chronic conditions from the simple sore throat and high blood pressure management to the complexity of multiple health problems and hospital care.
- Prescribing medications and other treatments.
- Managing patients’ overall care.
Key Message #2
As policymakers seek new ways to ensure access to primary care and use health care resources more effectively, it is critical to understand that NPs have been offering high‐quality, cost‐effective, comprehensive, patient‐centered health care for nearly half a century.
Supporting Points
- NPs have advanced education in pathophysiology, pharmacology and clinical diagnosis and treatment.
- NPs can prescribe medicine in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
- NPs are licensed in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. They practice under the rules and regulations of the state in which they are licensed. They are nationally certified in their specialty area and are recognized as expert health care providers.
Key Message #3
NPs focus on the whole person and have a unique emphasis on counseling patients to help them make healthy lifestyle choices and educated healthcare decisions. By providing health care that incorporates disease prevention, NPs can help lower the cost of health care.
Supporting Points
- People who see NPs for their primary care often have fewer emergency room visits and shorter hospital stays.
- The high level of satisfaction and confidence that patients have in NPs is evidenced by the more than 1.06 billion visits that are made to NPs each year.
Key Message #4
As The Voice of the Nurse Practitioner®, AANP continually advocates for the active role of NPs as primary, acute and specialty health care providers.
Supporting Points
- AANP is the largest national professional membership organization for NPs of all specialties.
- AANP represents the interests of the more than 385,000 NPs who practice in the U.S.
- AANP continues to provide long‐standing support and representation for NPs.
- AANP advocates at local, state and federal levels to support NPs and their patients.
- AANP is actively engaged in modernizing state and federal policies to reflect the education and expertise that today’s NP workforce brings to our nation’s health care system.
- AANP enables NPs to publish clinical research and data via two peer‐reviewed journals.
Key Message #5
Learn more about nurse practitioners by visiting AANP.org. To locate a nurse practitioner in your area, visit NPFinder.com.