President's Point

The Mentor, Volume 13, Number 3, 2002

Welcome to Q-NONPF!

NONPF launched over this summer our latest quality assurance program – Q-NONPF. Congratulations to Chuckie Hanson and the task forces charged with the development and implementation of this important resource for nurse practitioner educational programs striving to implement and/or maintain successfully national guidelines and standards. This program is the latest initiative by NONPF to provide leadership in promoting quality nurse practitioner education.

Q-NONPF includes the Consultation for Quality Nurse Practitioner Education program. This multi-tiered program offers nurse practitioner educational programs within NONPF the opportunity to obtain one or more levels of consultative service. The level of service corresponds with the scope of needs of the program relative to curriculum and program development. I urge you to refer to this article for a full description of the program and the three levels of service. As well, you can visit the Q-NONPF section of the NONPF Web site for further details on pricing and how to request a consultation.

Q-NONPF evolved from this organization's efforts to seek broad implementation of the NONPF curriculum guidelines and program standards and the National Task Force (NTF) on Quality Nurse Practitioner Education's Criteria for Evaluation of Nurse Practitioner Programs. Since the release of the NTF's evaluation criteria in 1997, NONPF has sought full implementation of the criteria within educational programs and within the accreditation process. The NONPF leadership and the membership addressed this issue on multiple occasions, exploring NONPF's role in achieving this goal. The main concern expressed widely – by faculty, regulators, and certifying organizations – was the need to establish a process for confirming the existence and adherence to uniform standards in nurse practitioner education. The work of the NTF reflected national consensus on the evaluation criteria, yet the process for evaluation of programs remained unclear. NONPF grappled with the issue of whether its role would be to establish a formal program review program. Following extensive consideration, we concluded that the role to serve our membership best should be to develop the resources to help faculty and programs to implement national guidelines and standards and to evaluate and monitor their own programs. NONPF identified our preference to keep nurse practitioner program review under the auspices of national accreditation. Through our organizational work and through participation on the National Consortium for Quality Nurse Practitioner Education, we have been working with the National League of Nursing Accreditation Commission and the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education to incorporate evaluation of the nurse practitioner programs within the graduate nursing program accreditation.

The development of Q-NONPF is the outcome of our members' work.  The NONPF Task Force on Program Evaluation was the first membership task force in place to identify a process to provide consultative services that would assist schools of nursing and faculty in monitoring existing programs and to help schools that were developing new nurse practitioner programs. A second task force, the NONPF Task Force on CQI Implementation, had the charge of implementing the process identified by the first task force. Various sub-groups of the latter task force worked on parts of the program, bringing together consultant training, materials development, marketing, and more. Developed and implemented by faculty, this is a program to benefit faculty.

The commitment of time by the members who have sought to develop and implement this program, as well as those agreeing to serve on the Q-NONPF Advisory Board and in the first cadre of consultants, demonstrates the significant obligation of faculty to assuring students and the public of quality nurse practitioner educational programs. The commitment is one we must all share to make the difference. We all strive to maintain quality programs, and with increasing limitations in resources our challenges intensify. Q-NONPF is one program we offer to assist faculty and programs. NONPF will continue to develop additional programs and materials to further our shared commitment.