Privileging noden van Verpleegkundig Specialisten in een universitair ziekenhuis: een vragenlijst [Clinical privileging needs of Advanced Practice Nurses in an academic hospital: a survey study]

The evolving healthcare environment necessitates the integration of Advanced Practice Nurses in health care to meet the complex needs of patients. However, Advanced Practice Nurses may work in a so-called complementary, blended or substation role to physicians. In a complementary role the care focus is on nursing care with no or very limited need for medical care. In a substitution role, the care focus is largely on medical patient needs. APN in a blended role have a more balanced focus on nursing and medical care.Due to the medical focus, medical tasks are shifted to APNs in a substitution role. However they are not able to work to their full scope of practice due to legal restrictions. There is a growing awareness at the federal Belgian level and therefore in several federal working groups task differentiation, task delegation and task shifting are currently discussed. One of the options to implement these task shifting options is to privilege Advanced Practice Nurses after careful credentialing to work autonomously. At this moment it is unclear for which Advanced Practice Nurses, in which roles (complementary, blended or substitution), which potential privileges are needed to contribute to a more effective and qualitative care management.We aimed to identify the need for specific privileges for all Advanced Practice Nurses at the University Hospitals Leuven. A single-centre descriptive cross-sectional survey, with a self-developed questionnaire was send electronically to all Advanced Practice Nurses.The study findings will inform the need for development of appropriate credentialing and privileging processes, ensuring optimal utilization of APNs’ and physicians’ time and fostering improved patient outcomes.