Why Your Voice Matters: The NPACE Annual Needs Assessment
By: Terri Schmitt, PHD, APRN, FNP-BC, FAANP, Executive Director NPACE
Surveys have become a way of life. Every website visited, product purchased online, organizational membership, service rendered, or trip booked seems to generate a survey. As a consumer, I find many of them annoying at best and rarely give them much thought. As a leader, however, I have a very different perspective… Good information matters.
Surveys can provide organizations with a clearer understanding of the people they serve and, when the information is actually used, can influence strategic priorities, resource allocation, programming, and operations. At NPACE, we conduct one major comprehensive survey each year. Affectionately coined the “Needs Assessment” by our staff, this less-than-five-minute survey is designed to do something fairly simple: listen to APPs.
We at NPACE want to know what is happening in practice. We want to know where clinicians feel confident and where they want to strengthen their knowledge or skills. We want to understand what topics deserve attention in the coming year and how APPs prefer to learn.
Do APPs want live education, on-demand learning, or some combination of both? Are CE/CME budgets becoming more restrictive? Is time away from practice increasingly difficult to obtain? Would clinicians rather have a concentrated day of education or leave the room a little earlier? Are practical skills such as wound closure and splinting more valuable right now, or is the greater need complex clinical reasoning around conditions such as chronic fatigue, rheumatologic disease, or other challenging diagnoses?
These questions are not merely hypothetical, they help NPACE determine where to invest educational resources and, importantly, where to listen more closely. The feedback changes what we do. One of the reasons I continue to value the annual Needs Assessment is simple, I truly care how my fellow APPs are doing. I promise the feedback does not disappear into a spreadsheet.
In previous years, APP feedback influenced live programs focused specifically on laboratory interpretation and radiology. The information contributed to acute care and critical care tracks at conferences. It influenced where NPACE travels to produce unique and unprecedented programs, including destinations such as Napa and Delray Beach, both places we had never been before. The Needs Assessment also helpes us and our professional partners better understand the changing realities surrounding CE/CME reimbursement, time away from practice, and the broader professional climate in which APPs are practicing.
Those decisions begin with listening. And this year, I want to ask a somewhat larger question.
Professional development is more than CE/CME
The pace of clinical practice continues to accelerate. Some days the way I practice changes week-to-week. New evidence emerges. Guidelines change. Therapeutics evolve. Technology reshapes care delivery. Patient complexity increases. Roles and scopes of practice continue to develop. Remaining current requires more than completing a required number of credits.
Professional development is honestly an investment in clinical competence, professional confidence, intellectual curiosity, and the ability to continue growing within a demanding profession. For many APPs, meaningful learning also provides something less tangible but equally important… the opportunity to step outside the daily demands of practice, reconnect with colleagues, encounter new ideas, and remember why professional growth matters.
There is considerable discussion about clinician burnout, and even evidence which I have henceforth laid out in previous postings. I strongly believe professional well-being cannot be addressed solely by asking clinicians to become more resilient. The professional environment, connection, autonomy, and opportunities to learn, grow, contribute, and feel competent in practice all matter. We also need to fill our own cup. If we do not do it for ourselves, no one else will. Sometimes filling the cup means learning something completely new or finally mastering the clinical skill that has been on the list for years to learn! Sometimes filling our cup means sitting in a room with colleagues who understand the unique demands of advanced practice and realizing that professional connections still matter.
For NPACE, professional development should be responsive to our APP realities and not simply a catalog of courses designed to accumulate credits.
So, what do APPs need now?
Honestly, as the leader of NPACE, I truly want to know.
I want to know what APPs are experiencing in practice. Are your experiences the same as mine? Are they different? I want to understand what makes clinical work more difficult or easy, where additional education could make a meaningful impact, and what kinds of professional development are worth the ask of increasingly limited time and resources available to clinicians.
The NPACE Needs Assessment takes less than five minutes. The information gathered will help shape our educational priorities and programming for the next several years… And yes, there is an incentive: NPACE will draw four winners from survey participants, two free seats to a live conference and two substantial on-demand learning packages.
But the larger reason to participate is much more important. Your perspective helps determine what comes next. If NPACE is going to create education that is relevant to the realities of APP practice across the United States, we need to hear from the people doing the work. Take a few minutes. Tell us what APPs need.
Help shape the next generation of professional development. TAKE THE NPACE 2026 NEEDS ASSESSMENT. Because listening is only useful when it changes the outcome.