Dr. Nurse?

Getting into Med School is Hard? Not with BeMo.
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Charles English

Charles English

faithless, the wonderboy
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isn't this just what we need?... *sarcasm*



Making Room For "Dr. Nurse"
By Laura Landro
Provided by CareerJournal.com


As the shortage of primary-care physicians mounts, the nursing profession is offering a possible solution: the "doctor nurse." More than 200 nursing schools have established or plan to launch doctorate of nursing practice programs to equip graduates with skills the schools say are equivalent to primary-care physicians....



for the rest of it, go here http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Departments/eLearning/?article=MakeRoomDrNurse&GT1=27001


:eek::confused:
Members don't see this ad.
 
Charles English said:
isn't this just what we need?... *sarcasm*



Making Room For "Dr. Nurse"
By Laura Landro
Provided by CareerJournal.com


As the shortage of primary-care physicians mounts, the nursing profession is offering a possible solution: the "doctor nurse." More than 200 nursing schools have established or plan to launch doctorate of nursing practice programs to equip graduates with skills the schools say are equivalent to primary-care physicians....



for the rest of it, go here http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Departments/eLearning/?article=MakeRoomDrNurse&GT1=27001


:eek::confused:
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Instead of creating more midlevels, how about just trying to motivate current med students to pursue primary care? Every year its the primary care residencies that have the most slots open after the Match.
 
couldn't agree more with you TopGun... i have my future sights set elsewhere, but i'm not dead set. if there were proper incentives, i think i could be persuaded to go primary care... but with more stuff like this popping up, i think i'll stick to my plan.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
I think that if the profession can't fulfill demand, then someone else will step into the "market" to fill that gap. You could argue that the role of the NP has been created by the nursing lobby though, so it's not as simple as a supply and demand model.

But also, DNP might be a good thing for the medical profession. If it takes so long to become an NP it would discourage some people from doing it, in contrast to the FNP taking about 2 years and many mid-career RNs I know are taking the next step.
 
I'm waiting for Dr. Medical Assistant. Then I'll be a doctor before any of you.
 
Charles English said:
couldn't agree more with you TopGun... i have my future sights set elsewhere, but i'm not dead set. if there were proper incentives, i think i could be persuaded to go primary care... but with more stuff like this popping up, i think i'll stick to my plan.
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FM is too much homework for too little pay. No thanks to 40+ hours in office 10+ hours Charting/rounding on admitted HOSP patients, and ~2-3 days overnight call. all for what 140,000?
 
Top Gun said:
Instead of creating more midlevels, how about just trying to motivate current med students to pursue primary care? Every year its the primary care residencies that have the most slots open after the Match.
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Also Matriculate more students into med schools. Enough to fill the FM spots.
 
People who come up with these stupid ideas forget that there is a nursing shortage. The solution is not to take a subsection of nurses, give them a lot of initials, and train them to do things that doctors traditionally do. The solution is to get more people interested in primary care, and to open more spots in medical school that are specifically geared towards primary care. Expanding programs like the National Health Service Corps would be a start.

I feel like this is more about nurses trying to expand their prestige and the marketability of the profession. Nurses with master's degrees already practice autonomously in many states and requiring a PhD would serve no purpose.
 
Top Gun said:
Instead of creating more midlevels, how about just trying to motivate current med students to pursue primary care? Every year its the primary care residencies that have the most slots open after the Match.
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$$$$$$$$$ is the best motivator

The congress, in its infinite wisdom, should change the reimbursement scheme, so that an office visit would be reimbursed on par with procedures and people will flock to primary care.

Economics drives everything
 
yeah, pay doctors more to go into primary care instead of train nurses and pay them less to do the same thing.
 
How about creating a more attractive FM residencies where residents get paid more and less hour of work. Even better idea is some kind of contracts to med students who will sign and promise to go into primary care to get full ride scholarship to their medical tuition.;)
 
Gpan said:
How about creating a more attractive FM residencies where residents get paid more and less hour of work. Even better idea is some kind of contracts to med students who will sign and promise to go into primary care to get full ride scholarship to their medical tuition.;)
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:thumbup:
 
Top Gun said:
Instead of creating more midlevels, how about just trying to motivate current med students to pursue primary care? Every year its the primary care residencies that have the most slots open after the Match.
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I don't think the decline in PCP's will change until we address the cost factor associated with getting a medical education. Students racking up 200K in debt don't really see lower laying PCP specialties as options due to the pressure of having such a large amount of debt hanging over their heads. If more money was invested into education in this country (rather than slashing at the fin aid office's resources with each passing year), student's could graduate with less debt and would feel less pressure to pursue a higher-paying specialty or sub-specialty.

A close family friend whose a PCP told me he graduated medical school in the early 90's with a combined undergrad/med school debt of $42,000 (all stafford). Now-a-days, that's about the cost of first year.

Increasing the number of seats is imperative as well. But I think an expansion of debt-repayment incentive programs for those who become PCP's would be of greatest utility.
 
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Gpan said:
...Even better idea is some kind of contracts to med students who will sign and promise to go into primary care to get full ride scholarship to their medical tuition.;)
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double :thumbup::thumbup: that's the kind of incentive i'm talking about.
 
Wow, there are some great ideas in this thread for getting more med students to pursue primary care. I wish the federal government would consider them instead of allowing midlevels to grab a large portion of the health care pie.
 
TexasMD2B said:
I don't think the decline in PCP's will change until we address the cost factor associated with getting a medical education. Students racking up 200K in debt don't really see lower laying PCP specialties as options due to the pressure of having such a large amount of debt hanging over their heads. If more money was invested into education in this country (rather than slashing at the fin aid office's resources with each passing year), student's could graduate with less debt and would feel less pressure to pursue a higher-paying specialty or sub-specialty.

A close family friend whose a PCP told me he graduated medical school in the early 90's with a combined undergrad/med school debt of $42,000 (all stafford). Now-a-days, that's about the cost of first year.

Increasing the number of seats is imperative as well. But I think an expansion of debt-repayment incentive programs for those who become PCP's would be of greatest utility.
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Agreed. US Medical education costs averaging $40,000/yr just for tuition is absolutely insane.
 
RA1987 said:
Also Matriculate more students into med schools. Enough to fill the FM spots.
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I don't know if this will work still.. I think the problem isn't necessarily a lack of matriculants, but rather that students self-select better paying specialties.

RA1987 said:
FM is too much homework for too little pay. No thanks to 40+ hours in office 10+ hours Charting/rounding on admitted HOSP patients, and ~2-3 days overnight call. all for what 140,000?
Click to expand...

Word
 
Charles English said:
isn't this just what we need?... *sarcasm*



Making Room For "Dr. Nurse"
By Laura Landro
Provided by CareerJournal.com


As the shortage of primary-care physicians mounts, the nursing profession is offering a possible solution: the "doctor nurse." More than 200 nursing schools have established or plan to launch doctorate of nursing practice programs to equip graduates with skills the schools say are equivalent to primary-care physicians....



for the rest of it, go here http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Departments/eLearning/?article=MakeRoomDrNurse&GT1=27001


:eek::confused:
Click to expand...

What's the problem? Let the nurses have primary care and just have them refer the complicated cases to the md/do specialists
 
yeah we see this with derm and cosmetic med too. There will be people who can afford to see real doctors and then people who are stuck with the rest.
 
RA1987 said:
FM is too much homework for too little pay. No thanks to 40+ hours in office 10+ hours Charting/rounding on admitted HOSP patients, and ~2-3 days overnight call. all for what 140,000?
Click to expand...

140,000? What is that, the average salary of a family practitioner? key word there is average, hermoine girl. how much money do you need anyway? if i end up making $140,000 a year doing anything, medical related or not, i'd call my income a pretty good success.
 
gatorsbball said:
What's the problem? Let the nurses have primary care and just have them refer the complicated cases to the md/do specialists
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the problem is that they are not going to be satisfied with just primary care, they are going to want to expand their tentacles into more lucrative fields, like derm, rads
 
Gpan said:
How about creating a more attractive FM residencies where residents get paid more and less hour of work.
Click to expand...

i don't think anyone will start going into FM if residency salaries went up and hours went down.

Gpan said:
Even better idea is some kind of contracts to med students who will sign and promise to go into primary care to get full ride scholarship to their medical tuition.;)
Click to expand...

where oh where is the money going to come from?
 
Isoprop said:
i don't think anyone will start going into FM if residency salaries went up and hours went down.

Maybe it's for those students who are thinking about going into primary care but have not made up their minds about which field yet. This would attract more students to choose FM rather than, say, IM, PM...


where oh where is the money going to come from?
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If I knew, I'd be rich by now:laugh:
 
Isoprop said:
:thumbdown: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/slippery-slope.html
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I don't understand your response. Nurses with masters are already doing "residencies" in anesthesiology, ob-gyn, pediatric, psych...so it makes sense that DNPs would do the same eventually. They won't just be primary care...and there's no reason to assume nurses will be inherently more interested in primary care, especially when you consider that most master's nurses are not in primary care.
 
so it makes sense that DNPs would do the same eventually.
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even if something is plausible doesn't meant it is likely to happen. but that's not the point. the point is, Doublecortin's implies that DNPs will specialize, and primary care DNPs will refer out more complex cases to other DNPs. that is a slippery slope fallacy.
 
scarletgirl777 said:
People who come up with these stupid ideas forget that there is a nursing shortage. The solution is not to take a subsection of nurses, give them a lot of initials, and train them to do things that doctors traditionally do.
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QFT. We NEED midlevels and nurses.
 
Tony1029 said:
140,000? What is that, the average salary of a family practitioner? key word there is average, hermoine girl. how much money do you need anyway? if i end up making $140,000 a year doing anything, medical related or not, i'd call my income a pretty good success.
Click to expand...

http://www.allied-physicians.com/salary_surveys/physician-salaries.htm

AVG for FM no O/B is 135,000 per year. Figure 65-70 hours of work per week some being call. Thats ~3380 hours per year 135,000/3380 is only $39.94/hr and thats gross income. I know people in EM that make ~75-100 and thats no call, no home charting, 120 hours / month. If you use the Allied Physicians numbers you get $150/ month. Same amount of debt. So you have the choice between 40 an hour or 150... Sure 40 an hour is good pay but for the same amount of time you can triple your gross income.

Bcat. If they get more people in med school and don't increase other residency more people will have to match into FM simply because nothing else will be open for them, that was the point I was trying to make. I think debt forgiveness should be used for FM esp in rural areas. This is why we need D.O. My experience is they tend to go to primary care more.
 
phatib said:
Simple solution:

Impose additional tax on plastic surgeons, opto, and ENTs, and orthos. You'll see a push into fam prac in a hurry. Econ 101.

You can't easily artificially impose a raise on someone's salary. You sure can create disincentives for the alternatives though.

Throw in some extra taxes on the hedge funds and I-bankers. Say 70% on incomes > $1 mil. No reason anyone in those industries need to earn > $1 mil and pay the same marginal tax rate as the dude around $200k. Need to push some of these smart people to do something more meaningful than push money back and forth.

If any of you kids actually have had a full-time job before, you'll understand the power of tax disincentives/incentives.
Click to expand...

I agree. I also think taxable income shouldn't include money spent on Malpractice or health care. I'm not really sure if it does for everyone but I hate to see the FM bring home 80,000 cause Uncle Sam thinks he is making 135,000 when really he is paying a portion of that to save his own @$$.
 
phatib said:
Simple solution:

Impose additional tax on plastic surgeons, opto, and ENTs, and orthos. You'll see a push into fam prac in a hurry. Econ 101.

You can't easily artificially impose a raise on someone's salary. You sure can create disincentives for the alternatives though.

Throw in some extra taxes on the hedge funds and I-bankers. Say 70% on incomes > $1 mil. No reason anyone in those industries need to earn > $1 mil and pay the same marginal tax rate as the dude around $200k. Need to push some of these smart people to do something more meaningful than push money back and forth.

If any of you kids actually have had a full-time job before, you'll understand the power of tax disincentives/incentives.
Click to expand...

So your solution to the problem is to make physicians who are already being compensated less and have insurance rates that are continually rising taxed even more? All that would do is push them into different, more lucrative fields of medicine, not necessarily primary care. Or, for those that entered medicine for the money (yes there are those people, gasp!), push them completely out of medicine. Doesn't seem like the simple solution to me. In fact, seems like it would create holes where none existed before. For example, now that specialties like neurosurgery/derm/rads/etc. are taxed a ludacris amount and the field isn't worth the extra time spent in residency/fellowship, how are you going to entice students into that field? By telling them that even though they'll be working harder than residents in primary care, they'll be taxed more for it and earn closer to the same?

As for us "kids" not understanding the power of tax disincentives/incentives, that's just a demeaning generalization that doesn't even warrant a response given how little you yourself seem to comprehend it.
 
You guys are all forgetting that the main problem with this is the health care quality for the patients.

You'll have a bunch of people who aren't physicians running around calling themselves "Dr. X" and confusing the patient as to who the doctor actually is. Also, two years of training plus one year of residency is much, much less than four years of training with 3-4 years of residency. These doctors of nursing will be able to recognize your common cold, but how many of them are going to have the knowledge and experience you get with a full residency program? These programs are absolutely putting patients at risk.

I wholeheartedly agree that if these programs take hold that these doctors of nursing won't be content just as PCPs. They will work to get more and more access to other medical fields. It sets a dangerous precedent that these Doctors of Nursing are the equivalent to full-fledged physicians, and anyone who tells you otherwise knows nothing about current allied health politics.
 
phatib said:
Simple solution:

Impose additional tax on plastic surgeons, opto, and ENTs, and orthos. You'll see a push into fam prac in a hurry. Econ 101.

You can't easily artificially impose a raise on someone's salary. You sure can create disincentives for the alternatives though.

Throw in some extra taxes on the hedge funds and I-bankers. Say 70% on incomes > $1 mil. No reason anyone in those industries need to earn > $1 mil and pay the same marginal tax rate as the dude around $200k. Need to push some of these smart people to do something more meaningful than push money back and forth.

If any of you kids actually have had a full-time job before, you'll understand the power of tax disincentives/incentives.
Click to expand...

Maybe you should have actually taken Econ 101. Terrible idea.

Why should we punish people who have undertaken extra training to further their careers? Let's say you tax specialists so that they make the same as FM practitioners on average. In the short run, you get more FM docs, and in the long run we have no specialists. Who is going to do a 5 year residency and a 2-3 year fellowship, then work longer hours for the rest of their careers to make similar salary to an FM? Very few people is the answer. In fact, this is sort of the same thing that is happening with NP's and contributing to the shortage. Who wants to do med school and residency to become an FM doc, when they could do nursing school and a masters and get the same rights and salary? In 10 years you'll be changing the tax code again to fix the specialist shortage.

70% tax on income over a million is just ******ed. People will just hide the income, or more likely, leave the country. America will cease being the financial capital of the world even more quickly than it's already happening. It's the new millennium. You can i-bank just as easily from the Caribbean as you can from NYC. A tax like this will not give an incentive to help people, it will give a disincentive to work hard.

Take a step back and realize that the reason we are in this mess is government intervention in our healthcare system. Primary care docs were doing great until the government and government-mandated HMO's took over their payment. The answer isn't increasing taxes for certain professions. It's less government so that the market can correct itself.
 
cpants said:
Maybe you should have actually taken Econ 101. Terrible idea.

Why should we punish people who have undertaken extra training to further their careers? Let's say you tax specialists so that they make the same as FM practitioners on average. In the short run, you get more FM docs, and in the long run we have no specialists. Who is going to do a 5 year residency and a 2-3 year fellowship, then work longer hours for the rest of their careers to make similar salary to an FM? Very few people is the answer. In fact, this is sort of the same thing that is happening with NP's and contributing to the shortage. Who wants to do med school and residency to become an FM doc, when they could do nursing school and a masters and get the same rights and salary? In 10 years you'll be changing the tax code again to fix the specialist shortage.



70% tax on income over a million is just ******ed. People will just hide the income, or more likely, leave the country. America will cease being the financial capital of the world even more quickly than it's already happening. It's the new millennium. You can i-bank just as easily from the Caribbean as you can from NYC. A tax like this will not give an incentive to help people, it will give a disincentive to work hard.

Take a step back and realize that the reason we are in this mess is government intervention in our healthcare system. Primary care docs were doing great until the government and government-mandated HMO's took over their payment. The answer isn't increasing taxes for certain professions. It's less government so that the market can correct itself.
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Cpants, sir, you just gave him a major WEDGIE.
 
RA1987 said:
http://www.allied-physicians.com/salary_surveys/physician-salaries.htm

AVG for FM no O/B is 135,000 per year. Figure 65-70 hours of work per week some being call. Thats ~3380 hours per year 135,000/3380 is only $39.94/hr and thats gross income. I know people in EM that make ~75-100 and thats no call, no home charting, 120 hours / month. If you use the Allied Physicians numbers you get $150/ month. Same amount of debt. So you have the choice between 40 an hour or 150... Sure 40 an hour is good pay but for the same amount of time you can triple your gross income.

Bcat. If they get more people in med school and don't increase other residency more people will have to match into FM simply because nothing else will be open for them, that was the point I was trying to make. I think debt forgiveness should be used for FM esp in rural areas. This is why we need D.O. My experience is they tend to go to primary care more.
Click to expand...

Whoa. Try 130-160 a month which is more the going rate anywhere but Bos-Wash and San-San.
 
RA1987 said:
I agree. I also think taxable income shouldn't include money spent on Malpractice or health care. I'm not really sure if it does for everyone but I hate to see the FM bring home 80,000 cause Uncle Sam thinks he is making 135,000 when really he is paying a portion of that to save his own @$$.
Click to expand...

Man. This is the biggest misconception on SDN. When you read salary surveys, they are, with few exceptions reporting pre-tax income. Malpractice insurance is not deducted from this number and is assumed to be either paid by the doctor's employer before salary or the self-employed doctor deducts it himself before he reports his "salary."

In other words, the actual "take-home-before-taxes" pay of your average Family Physician is $140,000 out of which he pays FICA and the usual income taxes which afflict most working people. His income is not $140,000 minus thirty-thousand for malpractice. I just signed a contract for a very high hourly wage and it is clearly stipulated in the contract that my employer will pay both malpractice (including "tail coverage") as well as my contribution to the state's Patient's Compensation Fund.
 
moe_4eva said:
So your solution to the problem is to make physicians who are already being compensated less and have insurance rates that are continually rising taxed even more? All that would do is push them into different, more lucrative fields of medicine, not necessarily primary care. Or, for those that entered medicine for the money (yes there are those people, gasp!), push them completely out of medicine. Doesn't seem like the simple solution to me. In fact, seems like it would create holes where none existed before. For example, now that specialties like neurosurgery/derm/rads/etc. are taxed a ludacris amount and the field isn't worth the extra time spent in residency/fellowship, how are you going to entice students into that field? By telling them that even though they'll be working harder than residents in primary care, they'll be taxed more for it and earn closer to the same?

As for us "kids" not understanding the power of tax disincentives/incentives, that's just a demeaning generalization that doesn't even warrant a response given how little you yourself seem to comprehend it.
Click to expand...

Indeed. And we do actually need specialists. As for taxing different specialties at different rates, this is the most absurd idea I have ever heard and will not fly legally or politically. Imagine making a law requiring plumbers to pay higher income taxes than carpenters.

Please visit the Happy Hospitalist for a clue on how doctors are paid. I think most of you have no idea.
 
phatib said:
Say 70% on incomes > $1 mil. No reason anyone in those industries need to earn > $1 mil and pay the same marginal tax rate as the dude around $200k.
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*Jaw drops*

Are you serious? 70% tax? There is no way in hell anybody would go into medicine. Somebody working so hard to have over half their income taken away from them by the government? I think Sweden has better going taxing rates than that.
 
phatib said:
Simple solution:

Impose additional tax on plastic surgeons, opto, and ENTs, and orthos. You'll see a push into fam prac in a hurry. Econ 101.
You can't easily artificially impose a raise on someone's salary. You sure can create disincentives for the alternatives though.

Throw in some extra taxes on the hedge funds and I-bankers. Say 70% on incomes > $1 mil. No reason anyone in those industries need to earn > $1 mil and pay the same marginal tax rate as the dude around $200k. Need to push some of these smart people to do something more meaningful than push money back and forth.

If any of you kids actually have had a full-time job before, you'll understand the power of tax disincentives/incentives.
Click to expand...

A brilliant statement on the biggest problem facing medicine: doctors are just paid too much!
 
Tony1029 said:
140,000? What is that, the average salary of a family practitioner? key word there is average, hermoine girl. how much money do you need anyway? if i end up making $140,000 a year doing anything, medical related or not, i'd call my income a pretty good success.
Click to expand...

No, you will wail, gnash your teeth, and curse the day you ever decided to be abused for the better part of a decade to make what is barely a middle-class salary in many of our more expensive metropolitan areas.

$140,000 per year is only great if you only invested a couple of years extra of post-graduate education.

Nurse Practitioners, by the way, are trained extremely poorly in curricula that are heavy on the fuzzy stuff but light on science. It has to be this way because generally nurses practitioners are not nearly as intelligent as the typical medical student. There are exceptions, of course, and it is a perfectly reasonable thing to decide to spend two years training for a decent salary than ten for a possibly better one, but the further along most of you get in your training the more the difference between physicians and mid-levels is going to be apparent.

You only think mid-levels are the equivalent of doctors now because you get all big-eyed and obsequious around anybody in a white coat, even if it's the Pharmacy Tech or the Phlebotomist. You just don't know enough to know the difference. Now, the public for the most part doesn't either but that doesn't mean that mid-levels can do the job. Imagine a mid-level trying to do the job of a hospitalist.

I laugh.
 
After being a patient of multiple FNP's:eek: as well as being an RN myself (I'm going back to school pre-med) I just do not believe their is enough training in these programs to prepare a practioner for the type of care they would be licensed to provide. I began my career wanting to become a pediatric NP, but after investigating the profession more closely was very discouraged. While we all dread the trial by fire know as Med-School/Residency it is a time that an amazing amount of knowledge and experienced is gained. I have no doubt that nursing school is tough..... I know I went through it but it cannot compare to the knowledge and experiences gained by an MD. While their are so many incredible NP with vast amounts of knowledge and experience out there I think trying to place a Dr. Nurse in a Family Physicians role will not improve health care as a whole. The level of care and patient management will not be as high and this shift may increase the nursing shortage as more RN's continue on.
 
Isoprop said:
QFT. We NEED midlevels and nurses.
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And what do you think creates the need for midlevels? The fact that fewer med students opt for primary care because there is little incentive for them to go into it. Primary care means long hours of work for pay considerably less than that of a dermatologist. If more med students were motivated to go into primary care, we wouldn't have turf wars with midlevels who now want to call themselves doctor and take over primary care. Sure, a midlevel primary care practitioner could probably handle less complicated cases, but I wouldn't trust them with anything major because they have not had the same training as a residency trained physician.
 
phatib said:
Simple solution:

Impose additional tax on plastic surgeons, opto, and ENTs, and orthos. You'll see a push into fam prac in a hurry. Econ 101.

You can't easily artificially impose a raise on someone's salary. You sure can create disincentives for the alternatives though.

Throw in some extra taxes on the hedge funds and I-bankers. Say 70% on incomes > $1 mil. No reason anyone in those industries need to earn > $1 mil and pay the same marginal tax rate as the dude around $200k. Need to push some of these smart people to do something more meaningful than push money back and forth.

If any of you kids actually have had a full-time job before, you'll understand the power of tax disincentives/incentives.
Click to expand...

wow, dude!:eek: you sound just like Barack Hussein Obama, tax the siht out everyone and it will save all our problems

WE already HAVE enough money, we don't need to increase taxes, we just need to spend the money we have more wisely, for example, why the hell are we subsidizing farmers with billions of dollars when the prices of foods have skyrocketed??? How about spend those billions to give full rides to everyone who signs up to go to primary care!
 
Panda Bear said:
No, you will wail, gnash your teeth, and curse the day you ever decided to be abused for the better part of a decade to make what is barely a middle-class salary in many of our more expensive metropolitan areas.

$140,000 per year is only great if you only invested a couple of years extra of post-graduate education.

Nurse Practitioners, by the way, are trained extremely poorly in curricula that are heavy on the fuzzy stuff but light on science. It has to be this way because generally nurses practitioners are not nearly as intelligent as the typical medical student. There are exceptions, of course, and it is a perfectly reasonable thing to decide to spend two years training for a decent salary than ten for a possibly better one, but the further along most of you get in your training the more the difference between physicians and mid-levels is going to be apparent.

You only think mid-levels are the equivalent of doctors now because you get all big-eyed and obsequious around anybody in a white coat, even if it's the Pharmacy Tech or the Phlebotomist. You just don't know enough to know the difference. Now, the public for the most part doesn't either but that doesn't mean that mid-levels can do the job. Imagine a mid-level trying to do the job of a hospitalist.

I laugh.
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quite true, panda cuts straight to the truth. The overwhelming majority of med students/doctors are smarter, more dedicated and more hardworking than the overwhelming majority of nurses, NP, and other mid-levels, period, end of story. Hence, doctors are taking on more responsibility and schools and thus should be compensated more.
 
So if the NP's wanna be "Dr.'s" does that mean they are going to have to pay the same malpractice insurance as us, since they are "doctors" now?
 
I mentioned in my above post I do not agree that a nurse practicing at the level of Dr. is a good idea but I do disagree with the comment about nurses being less dedicated and hardworking. Especially in the instance of NP. No doubt without going through med school and a residency program they have smaller knowledge base to work from which makes them less qualified to fill this position. While I completely agree their are lazy nurses out there, I do not agree that it is the majority of the profession. Nurses are not less qualified doctors, they are a completely different profession that focuses care differently. This is another reason a nurse should not advance to becoming a Dr. not the same.
 
DenaliView said:
I mentioned in my above post I do not agree that a nurse practicing at the level of Dr. is a good idea but I do disagree with the comment about nurses being less dedicated and hardworking. Especially in the instance of NP. No doubt without going through med school and a residency program they have smaller knowledge base to work from which makes them less qualified to fill this position. While I completely agree their are lazy nurses out there, I do not agree that it is the majority of the profession. Nurses are not less qualified doctors, they are a completely different profession that focuses care differently. This is another reason a nurse should not advance to becoming a Dr. not the same.
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I have seen nurses work, and I know that they are hardworking. It is not that they are lazy. It is that becoming a doctor redefines the word hardworking. I have a met a lot of nurses who are unhappy about their jobs, who hated being on-call, doing overnight shifts, etc. Nearly every shift I'd volunteer at my hospital, they'd make these complaints and they just generally never smiled EVER. I never heard doctors make these complaints. Do you know why? Because they never had the time, they were too busy running around. :)

The bar to become a nurse practitioner is lower than the bar to become a doctor. You need to contribute a higher combination of money, work ethic, intellect to become a doctor. Once you become a doctor, you can't unionize to make what you consider fair pay or fair work hours, and you don't get paid overtime. This means that overall, there is more work required in becoming a doctor and staying a doctor. And that is not a knock on nurses, that is just the reality of the situation.
 
Doublecortin said:
quite true, panda cuts straight to the truth. The overwhelming majority of med students/doctors are smarter, more dedicated and more hardworking than the overwhelming majority of nurses, NP, and other mid-levels, period, end of story. Hence, doctors are taking on more responsibility and schools and thus should be compensated more.
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How dare you say that. What PandaBear was getting at is that the majority of nurses don't have the same knowledge base as medical students, residents, and attendings (not that nurses are dumb people). What the majority of pre-meds don't get is that when nurses graduate from college they know more about medicine then they do. This doesn't change until the pre-med is a medical student and goes into residency.

I think someone should sentence you to a month of community service (shadowing) with a busy nursing department to see how hard working nurses can be and how dedicated they are to provide good patient care. Nurses have a lot more to deal with during their undergraduate studies (B.S. level..not AS level) then pre-meds students do. Nurses have to show more dedication to their training during the undergraduate days then pre-meds do. The advanced nursing training is not up to par with medical student and residency. That is where the change takes place. NOT BEFORE.
 
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