Advanced Nursing Lacking "Medical Science"

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Advanced Nursing is often considered less rigorous than Medicine even though Nursing is it's own profession. Of course there's overlap. Do you think it's because nursing doesn't require the same rigorous premed perquisites?Osteopathic medicine use to be regarded the same well, but now it is equivalent to allopathic medicine. Do you think requiring the premed prerequisite curriculum (eg: PA, DO, MD prereqs) to gain entry to advanced practice will better prepare advanced practice nursing clinicians?

Thank you in advance for answering. :)

Matthew Andrew, BSN RN

I don't have any objection to more rigorous academic standards. I don't think most nursing professionals do either. The objection comes from the insistence that nursing needs to model itself after medicine in order to be considered rigorous or academically demanding. There is simply no evidence that the addition of more in depth science courses will result in better patient outcomes. There is nearly 50 years worth of practice and studies that show NPs have equivalent outcomes with the education we provide within the nursing model of care.

That being said I do support the DNP. I believe it gives us parity with other health professionals like Pharmacy, MD, DO, PT, etc, and shows that we are equally committed to our profession and education. I also believe the DNP allows for more in depth focus on both primary care and population health, two things that I believe will be incredibly important in the future.

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Specializes in Internal medicine/critical care/FP.

I'm not worried. Smart people will still get jobs over the ones who have no brain and went thru Easter bunny full sail university of Trinidad and tobacco for their fnp. Good lawyers still make money and the crappy ones from roflmao university are working as secretaries. Nuff said...

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Specializes in ICU, PACU, OR.

I think you should ask someone who is in a NP program and ask about that. Nursing focus is on wellness, health, and disease management in a holistic manner. NP, CNS, and other programs are rigorous and also require clinical hours, especially when looking at a certain patient population.

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Specializes in allergy and asthma, urgent care.
No one is denying your accomplishment. And just because we haven't practiced as NPs, we can't have an opinion regarding the direction of the profession? That is just backwards thinking.

Matthew Andrew, BSN RN

Actually, a previous poster did say that no one sees getting into NP school as an accomplishment. Again, this is an opinion of someone who is not an NP, so I take it with a huge grain of salt. Anyone can have an opinion, but an informed and experienced opinion carries a lot more credibility than one that is developed from perception only.

My NP program was very rigorous, and I felt prepared me well to be a novice NP. No one comes out of any type of educational program ready to hit the ground running full speed ahead. Not even MDs. I would like to see better standardization of NP programs, and the establishment of more residency programs. You can only learn so much in school. I think a residency program would better serve the profession instead of advanced rocket science biochem and upper level physics.

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Specializes in Family Practice, Primary Care.

As someone who took two semesters of intro biology while in NP school (after already having taken A&P and patho and advanced patho and my first clinical semester) I can say with a resounding YES that I think pre-med classes should be incorporated into the nursing and NP curriculum. It opened my mind to many things and made me think about my practice in a whole new light. MUCH more useful than nursing theory, which I don't even use. Ever. Or policy, which as a practitioner I don't use.

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Specializes in ICU, PACU, OR.

Nursing theory is used everyday-it's the care plans and ridiculous nursing diagnoses that really don't make a lot of difference in the practice. No one has time to actually write a nursing care plan, therefore so many are standardized that we check boxes and don't really take them into account. Do we see momentary outcomes? Are those outcomes not expected? Was a nursing process used that led to a different outcome that was expected? Does anyone even pay attention to them?

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Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.
Nursing theory is used everyday-it's the care plans and ridiculous nursing diagnoses that really don't make a lot of difference in the practice. No one has time to actually write a nursing care plan therefore so many are standardized that we check boxes and don't really take them into account. Do we see momentary outcomes? Are those outcomes not expected? Was a nursing process used that led to a different outcome that was expected? Does anyone even pay attention to them?[/quote']

In advanced practice I never write out nursing are plans or nursing diagnoses; I do think of them quite often and I like to think they are part of what makes many patients prefer me over my MD colleague.

We recently had a mutual patient and my MD colleague asked me how I would diagnose their overall state and I responded immediately as a "self care deficit". He thought this was the perfect and now uses it on a daily basis. That's straight from nursing theory and he was astonished he never used it before.

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Specializes in ICU, PACU, OR.

There you go-nursing theory. I know for the sake of time we have standardized care plans, protocols with the plan included. But if I had to write one out on each patient, I would never get them through the OR. I too think that nursing trumps MD's over dealing holistically with the patient and trying to understand underlying causes for sub-optimal adherence to better health measures. That is the missing link sometimes. Cudos!

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Specializes in Outpatient Psychiatry.

I think the best curricular improvement would be if the -ology classes were taught by -ologists or even NPs with advanced study in the -ologies.

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Specializes in Emergency and Critical Care.

The quality of an NP and whether they can practice to the full scope is often dependent upon the area of the country they practice in. PAC's practice like Doctors in some areas and NP's do the same in others. My primary care provider is an NP we discuss my care together and if I need to see a specialist I am referred appropriately. Most people do not need a physician, and with the lack in primary care providers this is the perfect opportunity for NP's to fill that gap.

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Specializes in ICU, PACU, OR.

I think that is where advanced practice education is going. More MD's are teaching classes that pertain and nursing also, especially for cultural awareness, quality issues (performance) and comfort care. Interdisciplinary education is necessary in my opinion.

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Specializes in Med/surg, Tele, educator, FNP.

I don't know but I think I had a lot of vigorous science classes for nursing school. I had to take multiple biology classes before I could even set foot into an anatomy class. Even before that I had to take multiple chemistry classes. I was in these same classes with many pre med majors. So navy the question is the requirements to enter NP school are not as rigorous because nurses come into NP school with a lot more hands on experience than the average medical student. I for one have noticed the many medical students lack critical thinking. When I work bedside, I sometimes think to myself. ***** How did this kid get into med school if he can't even think things through. So, being "just" a floor nurse brings much more to the table then being a simple med student. Honestly, NP students have so much more background when applying to grad school than a bs in biology major going to medical school wouldn't you agree???

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