Scope of practice of an Advanced Practice Nurse at the Swiss Epilepsy Centre

Epilepsy is, after stroke, the second most prevalent neurological disease. The disease has a manifold etiology and symptoms and hence treatment options. From the patients who seek treatment in epilepsy centres, some suffer from psychogenic, non-epileptic seizures. Patient with epileptic seizures have to integrate a medication regimen into their lives, accept symptoms and change their life style to seizure preventing habits. Patients with non-epileptic seizures need psychotherapeutic treatment. Care has to be offered over long periods of time and needs to be tailored to very diverse patients' and family situations. Nurses in this field need broad knowledge about the diseases and treatments as well as enhanced skills in counselling and caring for these patients. Therefore the Swiss Epilepsy Centre in Zurich hired an Advanced Practice Nurse (APN) to increase patients' satisfaction with care and enhance nurses' skills and knowledge. This article analyses the work content of the advanced practice nurse and describes first experiences one year after the implementation of an APN-role. The APN worked half of her time in direct patient and family care. The rest of her work load concerned practice development in coaching and educating the nursing staff being involved in projects and collaborating with the head nurse on specific topics. In conclusion, implementation of an advanced practice nurse has been shown to be beneficial since patients' feedback were very positive and the increase in nurses' skills and competencies has been assessed as noticeable.