Women's Health Nurse Practitioner
The Women's Health advanced practice nursing specialty prepares you to provide comprehensive wellness care, as well as acute, episodic, and chronic care to women as older adolescent, adult, and older adult patients.
With a collaborative model for providing holistic care, this track places special emphasis on gender-focused health assessment, education, and interventions, the conditions that are unique to women within the context of sociocultural environments, and external influences that affect women’s lives such as public health policy.
The Women's Health track prepares you for practice in a variety of hospital and community-based settings, including primary care clinics, physician offices, community health centers, hospitals, antepartum triage units, school and college health clinics, health departments, and their own private practices.
Core Competencies Developed
Knowledge and skills preparation include:
- Physical assessment and diagnostic evaluation (health history & physical examination diagnostic studies/laboratory tests/procedures)
- Primary care (recognition, basic management and/or referral of common health problems health promotion and patient counseling)
- Clinical management (standards of practice, clinical guidelines, pharmacotherapeutics, clinical therapeutics, clinical decision-making, patient safety, application of theoretical models, and documentation)
- Gynecology (normal gynecologic health, gynecologic deviations, fertility control)
- Obstetrics (physiology of pregnancy, prenatal care, assessment of fetal well being, complications of pregnancy, postpartum)
- Pharmacology (pharmacokinetics/dynamics indications, side effects, drug interactions & contraindications, patient education)
- Practitioner-patient relationship (cultural and spiritual awareness, communication, teaching/coaching, patient advocacy)
- Professional issues (basic research principles ethical/legal issues)
Certification for the Women's Health Specialty
Upon completion of the Women's Health Nurse Practitioner specialty track, graduates are eligible to take the Women's Health Care Nurse Practitioner (WHNP-BC) certification exam through the National Certification Corporation (NCC).