Acute-care nurse practitioners: 'strangers in a strange land'

In 1961, Heinlein described a "stranger" from another planet struggling to comprehend and integrate the cultural idiosyncracies of earthlings in his adopted land. One could compare that situation with what confronts acute-care nurse practitioners (ACNPs) as they embark into the practitioner's world of acute care. Rather than embrace the expensive and fragmented patient-care world through collaboration with its "strangers," ACNPs would benefit from clinging to elements of their own native nursing culture and become "nesters" rather than "perchers" in the quest for improved health care.