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With Doctors in Short Supply, Responsibilities for Nurses May Expand
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Source: The New York Times
November 06, 2009
The increase in demand may well put an end to a simmering policy dispute over the circumscribed role of nurse practitioners in medical care. If tens of millions of new patients enter the health care system, it seems clear that nurse practitioners will be needed to perform many of the tasks now performed by physicians. Nurse practitioners are registered nurses who typically have a master’s degree in nursing. Numbering roughly 125,000 nationwide, more than three-quarters of them train in primary care, making them the largest group of non-physician primary care providers, according to a study by the American College of Physicians. (Physician assistants, another type of non-physician provider, generally work for specialists rather than in primary care.)
Rnurse
15 days ago
2 comments
Not only will NPs take on the heavy loads of the ill and healthy in primary care offices to lend a hand in this plight but we will be required to finish our clinical practice education and training with a doctorate degree in practice. That's right, mark the calendars as 2015 rolls on...We need nurse educators for the added burden of the students attending nurse and NP education. Who will pay for the added financiall stresses of these education needs!???
Respectfully:
A concerned certified nurse practitioner, DNPc
cuttie
17 days ago
796 comments
This is so true, I read about this before. It is so amazing that the need for primary care prividers are in demand. no wonder all the federal grant monies is toward advance degree nurses, it all makes sinces to me. It is really a shortage of Primary Physicians nationwide. Many advance degree nurses and non-physicians provider do have a specialty. When I worked at UCLA Medical Center. Many of the advance degree nurses worked as Clinical Specialists. This is a great article!!!