title: Clinical nurse specialist: role restructuring to advanced practice registered nurse.
abstract: This article recognizes challenges facing the traditional clinical nurse specialist (CNS) role and supports the merger of the nurse practitioner (NP) and the CNS into a hybrid advanced practice registered nurse (APRN). A historical review of each role is presented, with justification for role merger. The focus of the article is to present a personal account of this author's successful reengineering of a traditional cardiovascular CNS role to conform to a new state and institutional APRN model and ultimately to better serve a population of post-myocardial infarction patients.
authors.affiliation: Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
authors.forename: S J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Quaal
mesh_terms: D003422:Critical Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006754:Hospital Restructuring; D006801:Humans; D007587:Job Description; D008008:Licensure, Nursing; D016294:Models, Nursing; D009203:Myocardial Infarction / Q000451:nursing*; D009720:Nurse Clinicians / Q000193:education / Q000458:organization & administration*; D009722:Nurse Practitioners / Q000193:education / Q000458:organization & administration*; D015401:Nursing Administration Research; D009936:Organizational Innovation; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D013996:Time and Motion Studies; D014589:Utah; D016526:Workload