Would any ED that does physician-in-triage hire an EM-residency trained physician to be a full-time dedicated physician-in-triage?
Ever heard of this?
I know most EM folks would rip their hair out doing this, but just wondering...
Physician Insourcing
This brilliant in a way, actually. Think about this. More and more in Medicine, the physician role is being devalued with more and more physician roles being taken by non-physicians. CRNAs want to encroach on Anesthesia territory, PAs and NPs are taking over more shifts in EDs and replacing some EP man-hours, nurses are getting PhD/doctorates and calling themselves "Doctor," and even a nurse has taken over the Surgeon General position, in the Army. Ultimately, it's always about money, and wanting to move up in rank and capture the resultant greater salary.
So what we have here, is physicians, taking over the role of a (triage) nurse and
not taking a nurse salary, but doing it for a
physician salary. I know the doctor will argue that he's "doing
much more" than a triage nurse would do, and will claim he's worth every extra penny by expediting work-ups and increasing through-put. Whether those numbers play out or not, I'm not sure but you still have:
A doctor, taking over a role previously assigned to nursing and getting 4-5 times the salary for it.
The trend today involves outsourcing roles for cheaper labor, whereas this actually an example of INSOURCING of labor and convincing management that a job previously done for much cheaper MUST be done
for 3-4 times the cost! How long this will last, I'm not sure, but frankly I think,
It's brilliant.
