The healthcare sector is experiencing serious staffing challenges, and organizations such as the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners are working to find solutions. NAPNAP’s Pediatric Essentials Micro-credential program, launching this month, offers a way for nurses and other professionals to build their pediatric care skills and expertise while enriching the healthcare workforce.
The program is offered as part of the organization’s Pediatric Nursing Academy. NAPNAP Director of Global Initiatives Mary Dirks, DNP, RN, ARNP, CPNP-PC, FAANP, ELAN Fellow, discusses the program’s purpose and goals in this Q&A.
Describe the importance of the Pediatric Nursing Academy program and the NAPNAP Pediatric Essentials Micro-credential. How did you come to recognize they were needed? Is the program especially relevant to today’s changing care environment?
Dirks: Nurses make up 60% of the healthcare workforce. They are front-line, point-of-care health providers. When they are effectively prepared, nurses have a significant impact on health promotion, disease prevention, early detection, prompt treatment, recovery and rehabilitation.
Nurses are prepared as generalists. Maternal and child health content and clinical exposure have become more restrictive and limited over the past decade due to fewer nursing educators with this expertise, fewer hospitals with dedicated pediatric units and tighter HIPAA restrictions on access to patients in children’s hospitals.
Pediatric nursing is considered a specialty worldwide, and limited exposure of student nurses has reduced entry-level interest in pediatric nursing. The result is advanced practice pediatric nursing workforce pipeline issues. The World Health Organization’s Sustainable Development goal No. 3 pertains to health, and in a 2025 midterm report it identified that 4.5 million children under the age of 5 die each year due to largely preventable conditions. These include pneumonia, malnutrition, newborn infections, diarrhea and dehydration, HIV/AIDS and malaria.
Nurses adequately educated with pediatric competency can identify and refer patients with these conditions for prompt treatment.
Who is the program for, and what can clinicians do with it?
Dirks: The NAPNAP Pediatric Essentials Micro-credential aims to provide foundational pediatric competency for nurses and others who care for infants, children and adolescents. Right now, only a few countries provide formalized, pediatric specialty, advanced practice nursing educational programming – the US, UK, Norway and Sweden. Italy and Spain have approved plans to implement programs in the next three years.
Most countries with APN educational programming are involved in generalist preparation without in-depth, pediatric-specific content. Recipients of this new micro-credential will learn pediatric healthcare competencies that facilitate effective, developmentally appropriate assessment and intervention strategies for infants, children, adolescents and families in the context of communities and other environments.
Let’s talk about the micro-credential. Does that refer to the amount of time needed to complete it? Is it tailored to busy professionals who don’t have much down time?
Dirks: The NAPNAP Pediatric Essentials Micro-credential was developed by an assembly of more than 80 pediatric nurse subject matter experts from 25 countries. They used pediatric nursing competencies from all parts of the world and included cultural context to ensure relevant care. The program comprises 17 parts within four modules. It is self-paced and delivered virtually on the NAPNAP Pediatric Nursing Academy learning management system platform.
Learners have six months to complete the programming. Modules can be completed in any sequence, but the four or five parts within each module must be done in order. There is an assessment at the end of each module, and you get a verifiable digital badge upon successful completion. Each assessment can be taken up to three times.
Participants receive a digital wallet to collect their module badges. Once they’ve earned all four badges, they are presented with a micro-credential program completion badge. Learners also receive 17.25 continuing education or professional development credits upon completion.
Educational courses and assessments take about 21 hours to complete. Voice-over PowerPoint presentations and downloadable PDF handouts can be accessed from digital handheld devices. Facilities and institutions interested in providing the programming to groups of students, pediatric nurses or other providers may wish to facilitate discussions with the Reflections, Activities and Discussion Guide, a supplement to the materials.
What do you hope the program will do to improve access to care and outcomes for young patients?
Dirks: The program will improve access to high-quality, effective pediatric care by equipping professionals with competency-based pediatric knowledge to improve their confidence and satisfaction in caring for this specialty population. This knowledge can be used to mentor and teach other providers within health systems. We expect that health promotion, disease prevention, early detection and evidence-based intervention strategies for the pediatric population will improve their healthcare and outcomes.
The credential will be recognized in care settings around the world. Can you describe the added credibility it will provide to those who earn it?
Dirks: Employers will be able to scan a participant’s digitally verifiable micro-credential and view metadata on the pediatric competencies he or she has learned with each module. The badges signify knowledge gained by completing the educational programming. Psychometrically verified assessment is delivered by our internationally recognized partner, TruMerit.