Advanced Practice Nurse vs Nurse Practitioner

A nurse practitioner works directly with patients, and is typically responsible for providing urgent, primary, and specialty care to a specific population of people. This includes groups such as children, women, or geriatrics, among others. Their duties include recording and tracking patient medical histories, collecting patient samples and data, ordering lab tests, and many other direct patient tasks.

Here are the key differences between an advanced practice nurse and a nurse practitioner:

• Nurse practitioners have a more specialized role in terms of the groups they see and treat

• Nurse practitioners have a higher salary on average than advanced practice nurses

• An advanced practice nurse may become a nurse practitioner but they also can become a certified nurse anesthetist (CRNA), a clinical nurse specialist (CNS), and a certified nurse midwife (CNM)