Pediatric-focused Nurse Practitioners: A Qualitative Examination of Perceptions of Role Recognition

Abstract

Category/Date

Clinical Research Poster presented at NAPNAP's 45^th National Conference on Pediatric Health Care, Posters on the Move, March 13, 2024.

Background

Pediatric-focused nurse practitioners (NPs) play an essential role in achieving optimal child health. Yet, as a small portion of the overall NP workforce, unique challenges surround full role implementation (Gigli et al., 2019; Gigli et al., 2023).

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to identify challenges in pediatric-focused NPs’ practice that limit their ability to provide care.

Methods

We conducted a secondary data analysis of a cross-sectional mixed-methods survey of pediatric-focused NPs conducted by the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners (NAPNAP) in the Fall of 2021. The survey included three open-ended questions. We conducted inductive thematic analysis of one open-ended question: What is the biggest challenge to the pediatric-focused NP role? Each author open-coded a representative sample of the data, then met to group codes into themes. Using an iterative process, the final codebook compromised of 19 total themes (Runge et al., 2014). This abstract focuses on themes related to pediatric-focused NP role recognition which aligns with the NAPNAP research priority area - the pediatric workforce. The University of Texas at Arlington IRB deemed this study non-human subjects’ research.

Results

In total, 980 pediatric-focused NPs responded. A majority (67.9%) were primary care pediatric NPs, and 15.2% were acute care pediatric NPs. Nearly half (n=421, 43.0%) had 15 or more years of NP experience. Most respondents (n=952, 97.1%) provided an open-ended question response. Overall, respondents identified challenges with “who we are” and “what can we do”. Themes related to “who we are” included: role recognition, certification alignment, education quality, and workforce capacity. Respondents described challenges in “what can we do” with themes including: work to full scope and be valued as pediatric experts.

Conclusions

Pediatric-focused NPs identified barriers to role recognition that align with improving professional identify. Future research should address barriers to role recognition to increase the ability of pediatric-focused NPs to contribute to child healthcare delivery.