Blurring the Boundaries: A Study of Advanced Nursing Practice in the United Kingdom (1990-2010)

My experiences working in the NHS has demonstrated how critical Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANP) are to our work. We expect a lot from our ANP colleagues, and the bigger our patient caseloads become, the more responsibility we pile on them. We have assumed that those responsibilities have been set out, that ANPs are aware of their practice scope and act within guidelines. However, there are no regulations or guidelines that exist to define their boundaries of practice. My thesis will chart the evolution of advanced practice and how the ANP role has developed with no official regulations to guide it. I will interview ANPs themselves and will use their perspectives in my analysis of advanced practice?s evolution. My research will be the first of its kind, and it will fill the gaps in nursing historiography, which currently lacks historical investigations into advanced practice.