My mother is a DNP and she has no desire to "overtake" the physicians role. Or, creep, or whatever.
I'd imagine NPs like her are the majority. Unfortunately, the extremist beliefs of their leadership force our hand. Maybe my mindset will change when I'm out and practicing, but if I were in a position to hire midlevels for my practice or group, I'd hire PAs over them if at all possible. If their leaders are gunning for me and my job, I'll try to choke out the field as much as I can.
It's melodramatic, but it's like North Korea: I'm sure I'd have no problems with the average person there, but Kim Jong Un is a nut and has to be stopped. So we place economic sanctions to limit the progress they make, and start positioning ourselves for war as they ramp up their rhetoric.
The change from NP to DNP is not at all about patient care, it's about political maneuvering. I'm a little tired of having another thread about this, but hopefully it'll motivate the next generation of physicians to take back the ground we've been letting slip away to other hungrier, less qualified players.
I've yet to see a mid-level at my hospital break $150,000 (that was a pretty highly qualified individual as well) but there are literally dozens of MDs in the $500,000+ range. We have a handful of docs breaking $1 million annually... You will never see a mid-level in that range. Has anyone stopped to ask why a mid-level with 20 years of excellent experience should not be as well compensated as some physicians? Many levels of sergeant in the armed forces make more than lieutenants, and in some cases, even captains. That said, you'll never see a sergeant who out-earns a colonel or a general. Time commitment AND credentials should both be a factor and usually are in the real world; this is nothing new.
Many CRNAs are earning more than family practitioners and pediatricians. I even read a thread the other day where a psychiatrist hired a NP to replace a FM doctor after they left his practice, and did so at the same rate that the physician had been earning (drawing much outrage from his FM resident wife).
And experience only goes so far. When you're out in practice, you're not going to be pushing so hard to learn as when you were a medical student or resident. Four years of college covered a fraction of the material that four years of medical school does. As a medical student yourself, you know this, so apply that to the argument you're making.
And I don't care if a nurse has 30 years of experience as an ICU RN before going on for her NP. I'd take the critical care pulmonologist fresh out of his fellowship any time for caring for a sick person over her, because he trained to do the job he's being asked to do, unlike the nurse, who has lots of experience nursing. To a slightly lesser extent, the same goes if those 30 years of experience are as a critical care nurse practitioner.
