Practice Politics: History of Nursing 1975 to the Present

Award Year: 2006	Investigator: Julie Fairman	Budget: $283,250	Categories: Health Professions/Workforce, Nursing
Abstract: Over the past several decades, health care delivery in the United States has become increasingly specialized. So too has the practice of nursing. Julie A. Fairman, Ph.D., R.N. uses the nurse practitioner movement to explore the public and private forces propelling the specialization of nursing in the United States. Her Investigator Award project, Practice Politics: The History of Nurse Practitioners, 1975 to the Present, takes a comprehensive look at nurse practitioners and their role in health care delivery, their aspirations for professional growth and autonomy, their education and professional certification, state regulation, reimbursement for their services, federal and philanthropic funding for nursing education, and the influences of nurse specialty organizations and the American Nurses Association. Fairman's work should help reveal how the nursing profession has helped shape health care in America and responded to changes in the need and demand for health care services, while also promoting its own political and economic self-interests.