Why your local physician group is wary of hiring a new nurse practitioner
Many physicians are wary about hiring new graduate nurse practitioners into their practice, and I believe they have every right to think this way. The standards required of becoming a nurse practitioner are significantly lower than that required of a physician. This is not to stay that having the title MD or DO behind your name automatically constitutes a person being an intellectual genius, but overall physicians are much more thoroughly educated than nurse practitioners.
Topics to be discussed here will include; entry into programs, difficulty of curricula, length of program, and type of people who go into the programs.
Entry into the program
Medical school requires a much stricter set of standards than most nurse practitioner schools. Medical school has its own standardized test (MCAT) required for entry. Nurse practitioner programs simply require the GRE in most cases. Nearly all medical schools require a competitive MCAT score for entry also, unlike many NP programs which will literally take any GRE score above what seems the 25th percentile.
Difficulty of programs
Contrary to popular belief in the nurse community, medical school is much more difficult than nursing school. It may seem that nursing and medical students study about the same amount of time, but other variables must be considered. Medical students are often much more efficient than nursing students at retaining information. They often have more years of school under their belts, are more well versed in memorizing college material, and have better study habits. This is not always true, but I would bet a high dollar on this assumption. The same is also true of nurse practitioner programs. While some will debate this, the honest fact is that a completely online program with no set of written tests will not be as difficult as a completely brick and mortar medical program. Lack of written tests equates to lack of knowledge..... directly. Writing papers on nursing policy does not constitute difficulty and does not translate into better practice outcomes and clinical decision making.
Length of program
This cannot be debated. A minimum of 7 years of training vs 12-36 months (many of the programs being part time)? Who is going to be better trained? If you answer anything besides the MD, you are just plain wrong and need to reevaluate your math skills. The first debate somebody will throw at this argument is "I have been a top- level, elite trauma nurse for 20 years and know everything there is." Your right, you do know everything, ABOUT NURSING, NOT MEDICINE. I am not stating that all nursing experience is worthless, but 20 years of nursing does not equate to 20 years of practicing medicine or as a nurse practitioner. Being in the same environment doesn't count. That's like saying being a custodian wiping up the mess after a trauma scene is the same thing as performing a thoracotomy on an acutely unstable patient.
Different type of student
This one will be difficult to explain, since there are people from many walks of life that go into both professions. But in an overwhelming majority of cases, these facts and figures stand true. Medical students are often much more dedicated to the sciences than the average nursing student. Many nursing students are reaching for a secondary career and have a less than steady academic background than the average medical student. There are some second career physicians out there, but overall, not the same amount as in the nursing field. The trend does seem to be changing though with more young nurses entering the field at a younger age, thus making nursing their primary career at an early age. Quite frankly the single mom who has worked at the grocery store for 10 years and who decides to go back to be a nurse is often in a different situation than the 23 year old who has been taking 12 credit hours of science classes for the past 4 years of college.
Disclaimer
If the most you get out of this article is that medical students are geniuses and that nurses and nursing students are dumb, you have greatly missed the point. This being my disclaimer, not all of these figures stated above will be correct 100% of the time. Simple observation regarding the differences between nurses/nursing students and physicians/medical students should be enough to understand these differences though. Much of the blame is to be put on the accrediting agencies, who as I have stated in a previous post basically throw licenses in crackerjack boxes, to be earned without significant effort, testing, or any check regarding ability of the individual. Sadly, it is the same group of so-called elitist nurses who continually debate for unrestricted practice for all APRNs. No wonder nursing has a poor reputation in light of medicine. Until the standards are raised and equality (or at least near-equality) is promoted across all programs, the average APRN will not be equal to the average physician.
