Problems and Suggested Solutions of Advanced Practice Nursing in Disaster Events

Nurses constitute the largest component of the healthcare workforce and are often the mainstay of disaster management. The leadership, decision-making, and coordination skills that advanced practice nurses possess are of critical value for disaster precision nursing. However, previous studies mostly focused on disaster specialist nurses and emergency or critical care nurses and little attention was directed at advanced practice nurses. In this paper, we reviewed published research and summarized the current status of advanced practice nursing in disaster events. We identified through our analysis the problems in advanced practice nursing, including poor disaster education, a lack of clearly-defined rescue roles, and difficulty in the implementation of practice reform. We suggested solutions, including developing a whole-process and multi-form disaster curriculum, refining rescue tasks from a team perspective, and establishing a system of quality and safety supervision for advanced practice nursing, aiming to provide new ideas for the development of disaster nursing in China.