Advanced Practice Nursing in Latin America and the Caribbean: seeking its implementation - Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem

Advanced Practice Nursing in Latin America and the Caribbean: seeking its implementation |

Healthcare organizations are increasingly complex and specialized, seeking to optimize their quality and safety standards, and be able to meet the growing needs of their users. To face this reality, health professionals need to adapt to respond in time to the demands of the health context. In turn, the World Health Organization (WHO), through the Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health 2030, urges countries to optimize their health performance through teamwork, collaboration, continuous training, innovation, and evidence-based practice⁽⁾.

To answer this imperative, it is important to reflect on the evolution of nursing professionals beyond general nursing, stopping at the specialist and more recently in Advanced Practice Nursing (APN) with a master’s degree; in some countries, has already advanced to the doctorate in nursing practice. It is intended that this deepening facilitates the understanding of the current state of professional development in Latin American countries, with a view to considering contextually relevant strategies that facilitate the advancement of the function and provision of care to patients/families and the community at a higher level of professional specialization. Literature on the results of the role of APN in the countries in which it was implanted reports improvement in the results of user satisfaction, cost reduction for governments, expansion of access to services and resolution of health problems, in addition to greater autonomy for nurses in their practice assistance⁽⁾.

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