Discussion Post: DNP-Prepared Nurse Vs. MSN-Prepared Nurse

What differentiates the DNP-prepared nurse from a nurse prepared with a master’s
degree? How will a DNP-Prepared Nurse Improve Population Health Using “System-Level
Thinking” at the Regional, National, and Global Level
Contrary to what most people think, there is a significant difference between DNP-
prepared nurses and MSN-prepared nurses. The first difference is that MSN-prepared nurses
possess medical or clinical skills like preparing and administering anesthetic drugs or providing
social support to patients with mental conditions (Scott & Thompson, 2018). On the other hand,
DNP-prepared nurses have skills beyond clinical training to include employee management,
statistical analysis, and leadership. Most DNP-prepared nurses have “people skills” that allow
them to serve in administrative and managerial positions. In leadership studies, people skills
include good judgment, active listening skills, empathy, flexibility, patients, capacity to connect
with others, and strong communication abilities.
Another significant difference is that MSN-prepared nurses have the basic training of the
foundations of advanced nursing practice. They are often required to blend this foundational
background expertise with medical ethics and law and other disciplines like behavioral and
social sciences. On the contrary, DNP-prepared nurses primarily deal with evidence-based
practice (EBP) and data research. They understand how healthcare systems work and the changes
taking place in modern society. These changes range from telemedicine, big data, electronic
health records to artificial intelligence (AI). Most importantly, they understand new trends and
can help organizations adapt to these new transformations (McCauley et al., 2020).
Finally, DNP-prepared nurses understand how “systems thinking” works and can deploy
it to comprehend how constituent processes and parts interconnect and function within the

DISCUSSION POST 3
context of larger frameworks over time. Systems thinking is a holistic approach that DNP-
prepared nurses can leverage to improve the quality of perceptions of the whole, its constituent
parts, and the correlation between and within levels (McNab et al., 2020). In this case, the
“whole” can imply global, national, or regional population health, such as the quality of care or
public safety from epidemics or disease outbreaks. At the international level, DNP nurses can use
systems thinking to analyze how health practices and laws in individual countries foster the
spread of an epidemic, such as the COVID-19 virus (Peters, 2014). Nationally, systems thinking
can help nurses model how diseases spread across states or districts and how interactions
between individual state health systems can mitigate the problem.

DISCUSSION POST 4

References

McCauley, L. A., et al. (2020). Doctor of nursing practice (DNP) degree in the United States:
Reflecting, readjusting, and getting back on track. Nursing Outlook, 68(4), 494-503. doi:
10.1016/j.outlook.2020.03.008
McNab, D., et al. (2020). Development and application of ‘systems thinking’ principles for
quality improvement. BMJ Open Quality, 9(1). doi: 10.1136/bmjoq-2019-000714
Peters, D. H. (2014). The application of systems thinking in health: Why use systems thinking?
Health Research Policy and Systems, 12(51). https://doi.org/10.1186/1478-4505-12-51
Scott, B., & Thompson, M. (2018). Transitioning from RN to MSN: Principles of professional
role development. Springer Publishing Company.