US News Nurse Practioner, an MD Shortcut

[DrMaccoman]

What in the world happened to when the NP degree was suppose to be filled by experienced nurses? Now it looks like a shortcut to be an MD... sad!

"During my first semester of college I was planning on doing pre-med, but I got a 'B' in Bio 101, and I started doing a little research and realized there was a different way to end up in a similar place," says the now-27-year-old who went to Florida State University to earn her bachelor's degree.

"In total, it was less than three years from the time I graduated from my bachelor's degree in nursing to when I had a prescription pad with my name on it," says Sherwood who earned her master's in nursing at Columbia University.

https://www.usnews.com/education/be...g-specialists-can-earn-more-than-some-doctors

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[imtheman25]

oh lord. I have been saying this since day one. It only gets worse and worse and worse. MDs are future administrators, NP and their lobbying power are trampling all over doctors. We don't have a strong lobbying group to protect our interest (AMA does not care and supports NP) 10 years from now do NOT be surprised to see NP surgeons. We will not be healers anymore. SAD...indeed.

 

[libertyyne]

here we go again.

 

[Brahnold Bloodaxe]

There are currently 23,000 NPs graduating each year.
Assuming a 30 year average career and no further growth in the number of NP slots, this will lead to a workforce of 700,000 Nurse Practitioners. But the number of graduating NPs is growing each year.

In 2008 there were roughly 800,000 physicians and only 86,000 NPs. Today there are roughly 130,000 NPs, and we have seen them noticeably encroach on physician territory as a result of this ~50,000 increase. But in the coming decades their number will go up by an additional 600,000. If we are noticing the effects of midlevel creep from a paltry 50k increase, what can we expect when ten times that number is pumped into the labor market?

This is only the NPs. The PAs are a similar tale. We are moving from a world where there are 10 times more physicians than midlevels to a world where the numbers are equal. This is not going to end well.

 

[GoSpursGo]

This really isn't relevant to medical school. There are any number of similar threads in the Topics in Healthcare forum.