Thanks to these advances, in 2000 the ICN supported the creation of the International Nurse Practitioner/Advanced Practice Nursing Network (INP/APNN) with the objective of favoring dialogue, advancing the installation of APNs in the countries, facilitating the interchange of knowledge, determining the limits in the expansion of the role of nurses, and defining the guidelines for the formation of human resources at this level. However, in primary care, APNs have been incorporated into healthcare teams, and research shows positive results for the expansion of coverage and reduction of healthcare costs, in both rural areas and urban centers (1, 5). In Latin-American, progress in this initiative is embryonic: the role that a APN can fulfill has not been sufficiently disseminated and the implementation of this strategy has been limited by healthcare policies in many countries or by the opposition to APNs by professionals in other areas who are reacting to misinformation or to fear of usurpation of certain functions by APNs. The International Council of Nurses (ICN) counts around seventy countries as being preoccupied with introducing clear function for APNs (20) nonetheless, literature describes the main progress in this sense occurring in Canada, Australia, Ireland, Finland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, although in the last ten years significant advances have been identifies in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Thailand, Singapore, Korea, and Africa (3, 4). Levels of development in APN are very diverse in distinct countries, in the legal aspect as well as in the roles that a nurse with this level of training can fulfill. Advanced Practice Nursing (APN) emerged as a response to the need for professionals capable of giving care to patients, thereby improving the quality of healthcare the results obtained by implementing APNs in healthcare teams confirm that APNs can be implemented in the healthcare of patients of all ages and with varied health situations (1).

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