The Nurse Practitioner role evolved in response to a nationwide shortage of healthcare services in the mid-1960s. The first Nurse Practitioner program was developed as a Master’s degree curriculum at the University of Colorado’s School of Nursing, co-founded jointly by a nursing faculty member and a pediatrician. The first program specialty was in pediatrics; other healthcare specialties were added shortly after as programs developed across the country to provide primary healthcare services to large, underserved populations.

Now there are more than 115,000 NPs in the United States. More than 2,600 of those are in Arizona.