You first say that whether one should be considered a physician is determined by the education one receives. I don't know whether you are talking about quality or quantity of education, so I will address both possibilities: Some US medical schools have three-year accelerated MD/DO programs, so graduates receive less schooling than a majority of medical school graduates in the US. Is a graduate of such of a program somehow less of a physician than an otherwise identical graduate who attended a four-year program? Also, MD schools, on average, have higher-quality clinicals than DO schools. Is a DO somehow less of a physician than an MD?
Nitpicking doesn’t work for a couple reasons. First, the three year accelerated programs still have the same depth of basic sciences and they still have the minimum clinical hours required. They cut out the electives. So there goes that argument.
Next, both lcme and coca have minimum requirements for clinical education. If a school is not meeting those requirements, it will be placed on probation, etc. DO schools may not have what some people consider high quality rotations, but you are still getting the same basic science education and the minimum amount of clinical hours. Even if the quality of clinicals at a certain DO program is the same as an NP program, they are still getting 4+ times the amount of hours. So either the quality and quantity are better, or at the absolute bare minimum, the quantity is better. So there goes that argument.
Also, to your “lesser” straw man: there are not degrees of “physician-ness.” You either are or you aren’t. All MDs and DOs are physicians as they get a requisite level of basic science education and clinical exposure. Additionally, they all pass medical licensing exams.
Then you say that whether one should be considered a physician is determined by depth of knowledge, which is related to but fundamentally different from the issue of education. Are you suggesting that a DNP who has proven (through rigorous testing, perhaps) that she is more knowledgeable about medicine than, say, the bottom decile of family medicine MDs/DOs, then one would be justified in referring to her as a physician?
No. Perhaps my statement was not clear, or perhaps you’re just intentionally being obtuse, but what I meant by that statement was the depth of knowledge you have when you graduate Medical school is vastly greater than what NPs have when they graduate. If an NP learns a ton of basic science over the course of 20 years, they still won’t be a physician, because they haven’t met the other requirements.
Your question about a DNP knowing more about medicine than a bottom barrel FP is not likely to be very common. But, even in those circumstances, it still doesn’t pass the test. The FP had a much more in depth education in the basic sciences. If they made it through residency, then they met the minimum requirements to practice as a physician, which are already significantly greater than those required to practice as an NP. Having a **** ton of knowledge of clinical medicine because you’ve been practicing for a decade does not make you a doctor.
If online-educated NPs are allowed to lawfully perform the same job as a MD/DO physician, then of course they should be considered physicians. Is there an absolute standard by which they shouldn't be? If so, what is it? What definition of "physician" are you using?
(Note: whether or not NPs deserve to be physicians is a separate matter from the one we're discussing here.)
This is the most ridiculous statement I have seen on this forum. For one thing, there is a legal standard, and NPs and PAs do not meet it. The reason they don’t meet that legal standard is because of the above: they don’t get a medical education and they don’t take the medical licensing exams.
That's far less supervision than a PA receives. Every single chart a PA generates has to be marked off by a physician... or at least that's how it is in my state.
Not here.
