Pediatric Nurse Practitioner
The Pediatric advanced practice nursing specialty prepares you to be the principal provider of primary health care for children from birth through 21 years of age. Preparing students to provide comprehensive wellness care, as well as acute, episodic, and chronic care, this track encourages students to assume a leadership role in addressing health care trends, professional issues, role development, and research.
The Pediatric track emphasizes diagnosing and managing common primary care problems through comprehensive physical and psychosocial assessment, decision-making / diagnostic reasoning processes, and developmental health maintenance, including health promotion and disease prevention.
Focusing on a collaborative model for providing holistic care, this track prepares you for practice in a variety of hospital and community-based practice settings, including community health clinics, private medical practices, and specialty clinics.
Core Competencies Developed
Knowledge and skills preparation include:
- Health promotion and disease prevention (epidemiology/risk analysis, genetics, risk reduction, health behavior guidelines, biological considerations, growth and development, screening tests, wellness assessment)
- Assessment of acute and chronic illness (epidemiology/disease risk and control, anatomy and pathophysiology, psychopathology, diagnostic reasoning including differential diagnoses, health assessment)
- Clinical management of acute and chronic illness/conditions (current standards of practice related to management of body systems and problem areas, clinical practice guidelines, pharmacotherapeutics, clinical therapeutics, clinical decision-making, patient safety, developmental, family, and health related theory application)
- Pharmacology (pharmacokinetics/dynamics indications, side effects, drug interactions & contraindications, patient education)
- Practitioner-patient relationship (cultural and spiritual competence, communication skills,, teaching/coaching, patient education, patient advocacy)
- Professional issues (ethics, scope of advanced practice nursing, access to care)
- Research (manage conditions using evidence-based research for body systems and problem areas, outcomes evaluation continuous process improvement)
Certification for the Pediatric Specialty
Upon completion of this course of study, graduates from the NP track are eligible to take the Pediatric Nurse Practitioner (PNP-BC) certification exam given by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) or the Primary Care Pediatric Nurse Practitioner (CPNP-PC) certification exam given by the Pediatric Nursing Certification Board (PNCB).