Defining the urology nurse practitioner in Australia and New Zealand: A Delphi study.

Abstract

Background: Nurse practitioners with roles in specialty environments face challenges including uncertain role expectations and achieve urology expertise with on-the-job training, mentoring, and independent study. This creates a wide variety of preparation and role descriptions.

Purpose: This study employed Delphi methodology to identify essential components of the urology nurse practitioner (NP) role in Australia and New Zealand, representing an inaugural description of the role.

Methodology: This Delphi study was completed in two rounds. Participants were a nonrandom panel of experts with experience as a full-time urology NP.

Results: A definition for the urology NP in Australia and New Zealand is proposed: "The urology nurse practitioner uses critical thinking, complex decision-making, clinical reasoning, advanced assessment skills and clinical expertise, offering acute and chronic care to individuals needing urologic health care, including office-based urology procedures as appropriate. This care is provided in an environment of autonomous practice, with a basis of graduate education and relevant specialty clinical experience, and this practice can extend across health care settings and serve as a model to the wider NP profession."

Conclusions: Outpatient urology procedures were ranked highly and deemed integral to the Urology NP role. This may reflect the declining number of urologists and efforts to maintain urology access for local populations. Professional roles of the NP were given less weight by participants.

Implications: The project offers a contemporary definition of the urology NP role that can be offered to educators and other stakeholders as the role continues to evolve in Australia and New Zealand.