A Nurse Practitioner's View

The healthcare system of today is so complex yet so dysfunctional that I believe the time has come to educate and train the NP providers of tomorrow in a way that is reflective of that complexity. We have done a good job up to this point but need to bring that to the next level. Residency. I'm not necessarily referring to the typical residency training of physicians which takes place in hospitals but a residency-type of program in an out-patient setting (ironic that we use the term residency). We realize that healthcare is not exclusively delivered in hospitals. It takes place in independent providers offices, in community health centers, in mobile health vans, and in retail settings. It takes place in people's homes and places of employment. It takes place in many of the health decisions that we make on a daily basis. I found this NP residency program in Connecticut that claims to be the first NP residency in the US. The programs admits 4 NPs each year and trains them to ha...

My attempts to start a healthy dialogue regarding NP practice and Dr. Bob's 4/1/08 diatribe have failed : "One nurse practitioner linked to yesterday’s post and attacked my formulation. At the risk of insulting her and her colleagues, I have worked with nurse practitioners and I believe that she and they overestimate their capabilities. The problem with mid-level providers comes from their lack of training in thinking about complexity. They do very well in routine care, but the big problems in medicine come from incomplete thinking about problems." Thanks for not insulting me. And oh by the way, I'm not a female. So much for a prime opportunity to discuss NP education and the like. So much for better understanding the working relationship between NPs and physicians. Oh well, I must return to counting tongue depressors now because that's about as complex as this clinician can get.