Aligning Emergency Nurse Practitioner Programs Using a National Validation Process

The Consensus Model for APRN Regulation tasks nurse practitioner (NP) specialty organizations to develop and uphold the specialty practice. Through an innovative process, the American Academy of Emergency Nurse Practitioners incorporated data from a national practice analysis of NPs working in emergency care into a validation process to align emergency NPs education and training with current practice. As organizations and educators support expanding NP specialty practice, this novel process of academic program validation provides an opportunity for replication to ensure alignment of education, certification, and practice among unregulated specialty NP programs.