Faculty Practice: Maintaining Competency

Abstract Submission: NONPF Annual Meeting April 2010 Advanced practice faculties are charged with four potentially competing academic proficiencies. Scholarship and service as well as effective teaching in clinical programs are three of the components of the role in most settings. The further is that of competent faculty practice. Maintaining a professional practice in the context of competing expectations is very difficult. The National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculty (NONPF) 1 developed a position statement defining the scholarship of practice and proposed the recognition of practice as a critical and essential component in contemporary academia with recommendations for inclusion in promotion and tenure guidelines. The guidance provided by this document is helpful, however the issue of practice hours to maintain competency is not explored. In a non randomized survey of the membership of NONPF as published in 2002, only 37% of those faculty who were practicing were tenured. In general these faculty had been employed for 7 plus years as compared to tenure faculty with 10 years. The questions remained in this study if this is a result of competing time demands and expectations, or do those who value practice chose a clinical tract, abstaining from a tenure tract position. Maintaining practice while in an academic role is an issue unique to medicine and nursing. In nursing, the expectation is that 8 hours a week of practice is sufficient, and certainly meets licensing recommendations, but does it meet competency requirements? This presentation will review current literature available on recommendations for minimal hours of practice for competency, strategies to maintain competency while exploring the barriers and opportunities for clinical practice. 1. Pohl, J.M. et al. NONPF faculty practice guidelines. Washington DC: National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties, 2000.