DNP Career

A Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree designates a specialized area of nursing focused on advanced clinical practice and leadership. Nursing professionals who enter DNP careers are qualified to apply their skills toward improvements in areas such as hospital administration, patient results, and nursing personnel performance. According to nursing education data, the DNP qualification is being developed as a replacement for the traditional Master’s degree in nursing, due to the demand for nurses with more advanced skills.

Duties and Responsibilities

In addition to advanced patient care responsibilities, DNP duties also include a range of management practices in a clinical setting in order to implement systematic improvements. DNP professionals collaborate with physicians and hospital administration to evaluate outcomes of patient treatment procedures, and they also formulate new measures to put in place regarding preventative care. They also periodically have tasks of evaluating the current systems of patient treatment technology and healthcare information systems in their particular clinical setting. DNP skills that are greatly in demand include effective leadership, the ability to think critically in order to formulate improvement measures, and then to use available resources to put those measures into action.

Work Environment

DNP careers in entail working primarily in hospital settings, usually in specific departments according to area of specialty. DNP nurses focus on both their patients and on the concerns of the entire nursing team. Experienced nursing professionals with proven DNP skills may also be called upon for executive roles, working with other medical administrators in board room meetings in order to formulate policies and procedures. This wide variety of DNP duties usually requires a nurse at this level to work more than 40 hours per week, including nights and weekends. Just as with physicians, the typical DNP job description requires a DNP nurse to be on call when away from the hospital in the event of patient emergencies.

DNP Employment

The need for nursing professionals with the DNP qualification is expected to grow substantially in the future, as the overall population continues to age. More hospitals will need the additional support from the advanced knowledge that DNP nurses provide as the number of patients continues to grow. Nursing executives with the DNP skills of leadership and management will be especially in demand in order to come up with ways to best handle larger patient loads. DNP careers are expected to be the most readily available for nurses with the proper training in geographic areas that have an overall shortage of healthcare professionals. DNP nurses work mostly in large private hospitals, but can also employed in somewhat smaller clinics depending on their specialty area as well as patient needs.