Methodology for a Six-State Survey of Primary Care Nurse Practitioners
ResearchPosted on rand.org Apr 12, 2023Published in: Nursing Outlook, Volume 69, Issue 4, pages 609-616 (July-August 2021). doi: 10.1016/j.outlook.2021.01.010
Background
Primary care practices employing nurse practitioners (NPs) can play an important role in improving access to high quality health care services. However, most studies on the NP role in health care use administrative data, which have many limitations.
Purpose
In this paper, we report the methods of the largest survey of primary care NPs to date.
Methods
To overcome the limitations of administrative data, we fielded a cross-sectional, mixed-mode (mail/online) survey of primary care NPs in six states to collect data directly from NPs on their clinical roles and practice environments.
Findings
While we were able to collect data from over 1,200 NPs, we encountered several challenges with our sampling frame, including provider turnover and challenges with identification of NP specialty.
Discussion
In future surveys, researchers can employ strategies to avoid the issues we encountered with the sampling frame and enhance large scale survey data collection from NPs.
Topics
Document Details
- Copyright: Elsevier Inc
- Publisher: Nursing Outlook
- Availability: Non-RAND
- Year: 2021
- Pages: 8
- Document Number: EP-70030
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