Defining nursing roles

I am very near completion of my masters in advanced nursing practice. Over the last few years, the advanced nurse practitioner (ANP) role has brought about confusion about what the role entails compared with specialty nursing. This made me ask myself: ‘Will my title change again once I gain my qualification?’ ‘Will this alter my professional identity?’ ‘Should I be using it now?’

I also started to wonder if this advanced role will take away specialism. Can I really be both? How can I make this role work within outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT)/intravenous (IV) therapy and vascular access?

There are position papers about ANP roles and a lot of articles examining the changes and differences with speciality nursing. Cooper et al (2019) reiterated that there is a lot of overlap within the roles. They stated that the ANP role is more general than specialist and level of education was found to be a key descriptor in the definition.