I hope some states will accept FMG for the assistant physician license... and have them work under a physician license like PA. I will be the first one to support it.
No one should ever work independently in any setting so get over yourself. As an example to demonstrate this, physician's that work in the ICU are often incompetent with regard to physical therapy initiation or so called "orders." In other words my and my colleagues time is wasted left and right because some bonehead thinks they know everything.It’s the ICU. They are all complicated and you shouldn’t be the decision maker on any of them as a midlevel. If you want to give ICU level care you really should become a doctor
I hope some states will accept FMG for the assistant physician license... and have them work under a physician license like PA
What you think is egregious may have been very well indicated. For example, one can run a pressor and a diuretic infusion at the same time, if that's what the patient requires, although a lot of bureaucrats, with weak clinical knowledge, would qualify it as bad medicine. Or transfuse a patient with a Hgb of 9, after a big bloody surgery, if s/he's persistently hypotensive despite being clearly normovolemic. Or use unusual drugs, or doses. And there are tons of examples like this, the kind that prompt confused questions from all kinds of healthcare workers, who get upset when one doesn't have the time and inclination to condense many years of under/graduate medical studies into an understandable (to them) explanation.A lot of the misperception between physicians who feel threatened and NPs comes down to projection. The critics imagine that independent NPs practice like cowboys with complete abandon. It’s not like that. NPs are responsible for the work they do, and the mistakes that are made. The blowback is harsh, and nobody is there to offer a soft landing if you blow it. The board of nursing isn’t letting us play fast and loose with the rules and keep our licenses, and the board of pharmacy isn’t letting us prescribe if we mess around with them. On the contrary, I’ve seen physicians given very generous sanctions (or lack thereof) for egregious behavior. Independence actually seems to promote positive ownership of our decisions. When you are working without a net, you are extra careful. You are even more careful when the landscape below you is beset with lions that will eat you.
(I am a critical care anesthesiologist.)
Associate providers can practice (more or less) independently in pattern-based (aka "monkey see monkey do") settings. Hence the push for protocols everywhere. GOOD critical care is NOT protocol-based, it's VERY dependent on the individual patient (and if one doesn't know what I mean, one has a lot to learn). So APP independence in ICU setting is playing with fire. While a good APP can be the equivalent of a bad/average physician intensivist, especially in simpler cases (anybody can follow a recipe book, even if it's called textbook or Uptodate), s/he can't hold a candle to a good one, for the simple reason that s/he lacks the basic science fundamentals necessary not to think in patterns, but in (patho)physiologic probabilities. For example, I personally would never want to be treated by an intensivist who just follows sepsis protocols, regardless of degree.
I trained in a fellowship program where a number of the patients were covered by APPs. They were better than most residents (anybody who does just one thing for years had better be), but they occasionally exhibited less than optimal judgment, resulting from knee-jerk behavior. The sicker and more complicated the patient, the more it showed. They were excellent at dotting the i's and crossing the t's, and at applying protocols. And, obviously, they were not independent, given the acuity.
IMO, any APP who thinks s/he's equivalent to most doctors is dangerous, in the ICU or elsewhere (unless we're talking about truly monkey see monkey do stuff, such as a bedside procedure). One should know what one doesn't know (physicians, too). The main reason we are not seeing worse outcomes with independent APP practice is because we still don't know how to measure them, and because physicians are still around to fix major mistakes. I would be curious to see the outcomes of a 100% non-physician-based hospital (there is a reason no bean counter has the balls to play that game). Administrators are betting that somebody with 20% of the knowledge will be able to treat 80% of the patients (and that's probably true). The problem is that we don't really know a priori which 80% should qualify, and that is the big bet that hurts patients for sure in independent practice (we just have to learn to measure it properly).
Sorry for the off-topic, but certain things can't go unanswered. I am not looking for an argument (I am a guest here), just pointing out stuff.
I am an intensivist. I am not a physical therapist (or a PMR specialist). I don't tell nurses how to bathe the patient either. Sorry, that's not intensive care. I don't know what you're smoking, but you definitely have a problem. You are like nurses who hate being called nurse. If you don't like your job, maybe you should look for something that makes you feel happier or more important.You're telling me that physician conduct is individual patient based with regard to physical therapy? No, it's by and large knee jerk, Get-R-done B.S. It's quite the task just to deal with that as a physical therapist in the acute hospital setting. There's immense amounts of cumulative waste and abuse with net effect of harm to other patients as we're not in infinite supply or with infinite time. You see a patient "walkin' in the hallway" and therefore they're "good to go" ay doc? You base rehab decisions on little to nothing constantly. You don't know how to read or interpret rehab notes. You have no fundamentals with regard to physical therapy in any way. You have zero accountability for your absolute incompetence. You've seen your monkey colleagues do it thru your training, now you're doing it. So stop selling crazy with your nonsense because it's B.S.
I am an intensivist. I am not a physical therapist (or a PMR specialist). I don't tell nurses how to bathe the patient either. Sorry, that's not intensive care. I don't know what you're smoking, but you definitely have a problem. You are like nurses who hate being called nurse. If you don't like your job, maybe you should look for something that makes you feel happier or more important.
In the meanwhile, learn what my job, as an ICU physician, actually is. It's not rehab. Here, this is my board exam content outline: http://www.theaba.org/PDFs/Critical-Care-Medicine/ContentOutline_CCM . Do you see any physical therapy here? I don't tell allied healthcare workers how to do their jobs, which they are supposed to know better than me. One cannot know everything, hence one chooses to learn what actually makes a BIG difference. PT is not one of them. Interestingly, I will read the swallow evals and chat with the speech therapist, the same way I read nursing notes and most of the stuff that shows up in the chart, especially if I was the one who asked for a consult. I would also happily chat with the physical therapist and learn how I could help him/her, if that helps the patient. Interestingly this is the first PT temper tantrum or complaint I have heard in a decade.
And, by the way, anesthesiologist-intensivists don't send anybody to rehab. That's the primary surgeon's job. Before you insult people, at least get informed. Or, as some would say, educated.
The nursing classes are watered down and they are competing with other midlevels.Nurses take chemistry as pre read for nursing school. Although an intro course is all that is required at least they have a foundation. I would not go so far as to say they don’t know what acids and bases are.