Acute or Primary Care NP for Specialty Practices

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Mar 8, 2018

I'm not sure this is a PICU-related topic, but I'll answer it as it is where I am. The PNPs I know are all acute care NPs in various specialties; we have one in neurosurgery, one in the pediatric stroke program, another one in peds neurology, three in cardiology, at least one in hematology/oncology, a couple in nephrology, one in pulmonology (trach population), one on the thrombosis team, one on the ventricular assist device team, one in endocrinology, two on the pediatric acute pain service, one on the pulmonary hypertension team and one on the liver transplant team. Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. But since I work in Canada and we haven't really embraced NPs in primary care, this information might not be pertinent.

Julius Seizure · Mar 10, 2018

It seems like it varies to some degree. In some places, it is stricter than others. I have seen specialty clinics that are only primary care NPs, and others that only take acute care NPs because they also round in the hospital. If you are going to see patients in both clinic and hospital, you are more likely to be required to have the acute care cert to be considered for the job.