Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Practice Guidelines – Quick-Reference Gerontology Book for Nurse Practitioners, Includes over 90 Common Conditions, ACNP Review with eBook Access Included

Dr. Harris states, “APPs have come a long way over the years. I have seen the role of NPs and PAs expand tremendously since I first began practicing in this role. I have seen the negative terms to describe us such as, midlevels, physician extenders, and helpers, evolve into advanced practice providers. I have also seen the collaborative growth and mutual respect grow between NPs and PAs, a relationship that was previously more isolated. I respect my physician assistant colleagues, and, as a nurse practitioner, I have learned quite a bit from their struggles with role and identity. I find that I personally relate to these struggles in how I practice and how I see my own role on the health care team. I have also learned the value of combining resources and focusing on how we are similar, rather than different.”Dr. Harris, you are quite capable as an adult to respect and learn knowledge from another person without menially and subserviently labeling yourself as an alternate and inaccurate euphemistic acronym such as, “advanced practice provider.” If you choose to label yourself as such, please do; however, do not implicate this for all other APRNs just because you identify as an “APP.” Many health care organizations have incepted “advanced practice centers” into their centralized administrative reporting structures, and in doing so, have also indolently labeled APRNs as “APPs.” This restructuring and bureaucratic power is typical of medical centers and health care organizations, which ultimately fails to represent the best interests of the individuals in said organizations.Advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) and PAs are not one in the same! To be clear, APRNs are prepared in schools/colleges of nursing, and not in physician assistant programs! Additionally, APRNs are members of the discipline of nursing, which holds a federally mandated entity in the National Institutes of Health--the NINR! Your dramatic overtone of “how we are similar, rather than different” suggests that there may be no difference whatsoever between APRNs and PAs. To that end, even when the APRN consensus model aptly indoctrinates the “APRN” title for the for APRN roles, you--along with other nurses--discount its existence by perpetuating the use of the alternate and inaccurate label, “APP.”Now is not the time to espouse inclusivity just because “it feels right” or “is the right thing to do” in light of the diversity delusion that is occurring in the United States’. Instead, APRNs must focus on APRN-specific research and NOT “APP” research that fails to consider APRN-related outcomes independent to those of PAs. By committing to such research practices will undoubtedly promote advanced practice nursing, APRNs, and in order to achieve APRN full practice authority. Lastly, have nurses ever created an alternate and inaccurate label such as “medical practice provider” to refer to both allopathic and osteopathic physicians when their conceptual philosophies are evidently disparate? Get it together Dr. Harris, and promote your profession and discipline properly. You may learn and mingle with all health care members, but please understand and know the difference in the contribution you make as an APRN, and not as an “APP!” Of note, the American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA) does NOT condone the use of the “APP” label. Please become informed.I would like to recommend Barkely’s 'Practice Considerations for Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioners' for those who wish to become an APRN and properly represent advanced practice nursing!