A Nurse Practitioner's View

I've precepted many NP students during the years and usually had pretty rewarding experiences. (There was that one student that just didn't get it...I guess I can save that one and how I handled it for another post!) I like to think of precepting as a two-way street: my student is getting the hands on experience of patient care with guidance while I can further hone my precepting skills. Precepting a student is not simply telling them how to treat a condition or how to prescribe a medication. It is helping that student critically think to formulate differential diagnoses and treatment plans. Precepting can often be overlooked as part of the education and training of health professionals yet it is a critical part of acquiring the necessary skill set of patient care. I think back to my experiences as a student and have found supportive clinicians that helped to shape me into the clinician I am today (I was precepted by a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, an OB/GYN, a family nur...

"Hey, How are you doing today?" This is supposedly the way that many nurse practitioners (and physician assistants) introduce ourselves to patients according to Gary Larkin, M.D. who recently conducted a study published in the American Journal of Bioethics entitled, "Patient willingness to be seen by physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and residents in the emergency department: Does the assumption of assent have an empirical basis?" This study is a thinly veiled turf attack on both nurse practitioners and physician assistants. From the beginning of the article, the authors write: "...physician substitution has often been covert in the emergency department (ED), confusing patients as to provider identity and appropriate scope of practice. This confusion may be heightened as junior doctors and nonphysician clinicians alike wear the same long white coats and Littmann stethoscopes as experienced physicians." I retrieved the article myself to unde...