Women's health: where are nurse practitioner programs headed?

Until quite recently, the discipline of women's health has been restricted to reproductive health. While graduate nurse practitioner (NP) programs have included issues across the life cycle and health promotion in their curricula, there is growing emphasis on primary care of women. Graduate nursing programs that offer women's health and obstetric/gynecologic NP tracks were surveyed in 1996 to elicit content in the curriculum and to ascertain whether changes in requirements for certification were impacting programs. Programs listed in the 1994 National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties directory (NONPF) were surveyed. Twenty-eight of 31 programs responded; results were tallied by frequency distribution. Results documented differences in programs, suggesting that a clear definition of women's health advanced practice is needed. The author recommends a national dialog to explore advanced practice in women's health and asks if there should be two types of NP programs--primary care of women (a generalist NP) and reproductive health (a specialist NP)--and how NP programs and credentialing bodies should differentiate graduate programs as well as content for certification exams.