When comparing the licensure, accreditation,
certification, and education (LACE) requirements for APNs in California, Washington, and
Illinois, I noticed that they have a few similarities.
All three states require APNs to hold an
active registered nursing license, must have graduated from an accredited Master’s of nursing
program in a specific specialty, and obtain a national certificate in order to practice with the
exception of California (AANP, 2016).
Students that graduated from a California institution do
not require national certification while out-of-state graduates do (California board of registered
nursing, 2016).
I was surprised by the different classification of advanced practice nursing
(APN) that each state recognized.
Washington for instance only has three APN roles that require
a license which includes: Nurse Practitioner (NP), Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM), and
Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) (Nursinglicensure.org, n.d.).
In Illinois, licenses
are issued for four roles of the APN which include the three roles mentioned for Washington as
well as the role of the Certified clinical nurse specialist (CNS) (graduatenursingedu.org, 2016).
Lastly, California recognizes and certifies six different classifications of APN and include the
roles mentioned above in addition to Psychiatric/mental health nurse (PMH) and Public health
nurse (PHN) (graduatenursingedu.org, 2016).
