Background and purpose: Evaluating the impact of nurse practitioner (NP) practice has become a priority area of focus for demonstrating outcomes. A number of quality measures are available to enable practice-specific evaluation of NP roles and initiatives. This article reviews sources of quality measures that can be used to facilitate quantifying the outcomes of NP practice as part of an overall evaluation agenda.
Methods: National resources and published literature on NP quality measures were reviewed.
Conclusions: Various resources and toolkits exist to assist NPs in identifying outcomes of practice using quality measures.
Implications for practice: The need to demonstrate outcomes of NP practice remains an ongoing priority area regardless of the clinical practice setting. A variety of sources of quality measures exist that can be used to showcase the effect of NP care. The use of quality measures can be effectively integrated into evaluation of NP role and NP-directed initiatives to demonstrate impact, and enhance the conduct of an NP outcomes assessment. The use of organizational, NP-specific, and national-related quality measures can help to showcase how NP care improves the quality, safety, and costs of health care.
Keywords: Research; advanced practice nurse (APN); nurse practitioners; outcomes; professionalism; quality; quality improvement.
©2017 American Association of Nurse Practitioners.