Valuing the paradigm of nursing: Can nurse practitioners resist medicalization to transform healthcare? (19 October 2021)

Summary

A lay person commented recently that ‘seeing how nurse practitioners were so clever why didn't they rename themselves as something other than a type of nurse’. A sobering comment indeed, but one that has, on occasions, been uttered by nurse practitioners (NPs) themselves from around the world. In this editorial, Jenny Carryer and Sue Adams tease out the thinking behind this idea and consider the implications for the nursing discipline. In doing so, they draw essentially on the New Zealand experience of NP establishment but believe these ideas have international significance.