A Great Time Saver

As the case for nurse practitioners is becoming increasingly obvious across the spectrum, predictably, the turf battles are rearing their ugly heads. Here is a blatant example of the rhetoric and follows a formula that I am going to reveal to spare any future time wasting reading them.

• Refer to the physician shortage and mention "Obamacare" 
• State the obligatory, "nurse practitioners are valued as part of the health care team" 
• Point out the differences in education and training (for example, physicians have 1 billion hours of training where NPs have nothing even remotely close to that) 
• Make the inference that quality of care will somehow suffer because of the differences in education/training (though there is not one shred of evidence that proves this)
• Make sure NOT to mention anything about patient outcomes being the same or better when NPs are primary care providers
• If there is mention of outcome studies, be sure to highlight how they are "old" studies with small numbers of patients
• Conclude by saying something with the phrase "physician-led team"

There you have it! I hope with this post, I was able to save the reader time wasted reading the same old argument. 

As a bonus, for on-line stories that allow readers to comment, I am going to save you time from reading the barrage of denigrating comments by summarizing here:

• Blah blah blah...as a medical student blah blah blah....physicians should stop teaching NPs/PAs etc
• Blah blah blah...(make statement about NP education yet have no clue about it)...blah blah
• And finally, state that NPs won't see the poor and underserved and prefer to practice in the "better" practices with insured patients 

Of course, this is not the sentiment of most and the one's who truly want to improve health care understand that.