| dc.description.abstract | Healthcare is moving away from the traditional primary care physician model to meet changing patient care needs, with increasing utilization of clinicians beyond the primary care physician, including nurse practitioners and physician assistants. As the number of NPs and PAs increase to meet demand for primary care providers, it is imperative that key components to successful role transition from student to clinician are understood and needs of novice clinicians be identified. The purpose of this practice improvement project was to perform and analyze a needs assessment focused on identifying perceptions of practice preparedness, organizational support, and educational needs of new nurse practitioners and physician assistants during the initial transition to advanced practice in the primary care setting. Results show many surveyed clinician's rate current practice preparedness at generally well (60.7%) or very well prepared (14.3%). Organizational support for transition showed varied results with 37.9% percent of respondents feeling either very unsupported or somewhat supported. This offers an area for improvement through transition programming from the employer perspective, a concept well-supported in previous literature. The desire for increased employer support was offered by many needs assessment participants in response to an open-ended question seeking comments on their transition experience. The responses highlighted the desire for use of ongoing education and mentorship in supporting transition to practice. Educational needs identified were utilized in the development of an electronic resource for novice clinicians. Topics identified and covered included coding and billing, mental health/pharmacology, chronic disease management, and procedural topics. Organizational content such as daily workflow, documentation, order entry, services available, and practice management were all areas desired for continued coverage as well. Hypothetical seminar offering frequency, duration, timing, and compensations were collected; the most desired preferences included monthly in-person seminars lasting one hour during the work day, with continuing education hours as a means of compensation. Findings from the needs assessment were provided to key stakeholders in the sponsoring healthcare system to inform transition-to-practice programming currently under development. The findings can also serve to further highlight the desire from novice clinicians for ongoing support during transition to practice. | en_US |
