MOD NOTE: This is a professional forum, and I expect posters to treat it as such. People on all sides of the discussion need to abstain from personal insults, as that is against SDN Policy, and further comments will be handled with administrative action. -t4c
However, this ribbing is between different members of the same family. We all share a come heritage and training experience. Psychologists do not. The field of medicine has many mid-level providers who have more limited training but are also trained from the start in the medical model.
You are pretty much making this a guild issue, and not a treatment issue. It is understandable that you want to protect your guild, but your assertion that medical psychologists are unable to provide care is not supported by the previous 10 years of data.
Psychologists have no comprehension of the medical complications of medications. They don't know how to recognize medical or neurological complications of different diseases. They don't know how to take a basic physical exam or have any understaning of labs or vital signs.
I would argue that most psychologists would struggle in a number of these areas, but a psychologist who went through the appropriate post-doc training would sufficiently be able to handle these issues.
No major medical, patient, or healthcare organizations support your efforts.
So the hospitals in LA that actively recruit medical psychologists are exempt from your list? There are also hospitals in NM who support prescribing psychologists. There are also prescribing psychologists on military bases. There are also a number of state-level patient advocacy groups that suppose prescription privledges.
The whole idea of getting lobby groups and petitioning for "rights" with substandard knowledge conjures up the image of charlatans and snake oil salesman of the past. The medical community and most of the public is not fooled. You would think that with decades of your efforts to prescribe meds, you would have more to show for it. Not to worry. There will always be some poor folks that seeks a cure for their spinal cord injury from a chiropracter rather than a neurosurgeon....
Politics is a unique animal, and you either understand how it works, or you don't. Instead of arguing outside of this realm, I'll suffice to say that everything from an oral argument through a signed bill requires lobbying groups and positioning....as it is a nature of the beast.
.....many of the problems previously thought to be related to pent up anxiety over not getting an extra popsicle in the first grade are actually due to biochemical/biophysical causes.
As Frued once said, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar". There has been some limited research supporting the biological basis to some diagnoses, this is still a growing and uncertain field. I welcome any advances we find in this area, though I strongly doubt it all can be traced back to a random sequence of genes, as nature does not function autonomously from nuture. It is more likely that a combination of nuture and nature is at play, and the solution cannot solely be found in a pill.
I'm sure you folks don't want to admit that since you are not trained in biology, chemistry, or physics, nor any derivation thereof.
Some psychologists don't have this training, but anyone in neuropsych/neuroscience areas not only have this training, but are most likely teaching in your medical schools, as they are the specialists in these areas. On a personal note I've had classes in neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, neurochemistry, A&P, etc.
I directly take issue with your statement that polypharmacy is not supported by evidence - shear nonsense. Sure, using as few medicines as possible is desirable, but there are many patients who require more than one overlapping medicine.
Polypharmacy in regard to psychotropics, on average, does not have a wealth of support behind it. There are
some studies that support
some benefits from polypharmacy, but the vast majority of polypharmacy out there is done as personal preference. There may be instances where certain combinations work, but don't assert that there is hard data that supports psychtropic polypharmacy across the board. In limited, and specific case presentations it may have support, but usually it is not generalizable across "real" patients. Research limitations are typically quite significant in the polypharmacy studies.
Many mid-levels still practice on a physician's license because they are required to do so by law in some states. If the physician didn't agree to hire them, they wouldn't have a job in these states. So, yes, I would call that supporting their prescription privileges. Not revisionist history. Everyday reality in the state I'm in.
Circular logic does not pan out in this instance, as you are assuming since they are present now, that they were welcome then. The initial push (specifically for NPs) was met with a great deal of pushback from both the AMA and the A(Psychiatry)A.
Yeah, I'd love to see how you medical geniuses would reduce a mentally ******ed epileptic's neuroepileptic dosages or pull them off of their BAD polypharmacy regimen and wind up with a patient in status epilepticus.
Polypharmacy has its place, it just isn't with every patient who walks through the door.
.... when someone from outside comes along and posts here, if it doesn't fit the agenda of the thread, you all attack together because you don't want to hear a divergent opinion.
I welcome the discussion, as long as it is done professionally. As I noted above, we all need to make sure our emotions do not get the best of our posts.