For Primary Care, can an NP ever be as skilled as an MD?

[alexamasan]

Perhaps after years (or decades) of practice, do you think an NP can be as skilled in providing primary care as an MD? Or will the NP forever be lacking something for not going to medical school?

[myoglobin, ASN, BSN, MSN]

5 minutes ago, nursenmom3 said:

We use an NP as a primary care provider for all of our kids, the two healthy "easy" ones, and my medically complex/medically fragile/technology dependent one.

My complex kid joined our family through adoption, and so we had to think carefully about whether we wanted to use the same provider, vs. a doctor in the same office, or a different practice. In the end, we decided to use the same person for a few reasons. For one thing, the things that we valued the most about her, like the fact that she really got to know our boys, and the fact that she listens carefully to us and them were even more important with our complex son. But even more importantly, we don't make any medical decisions for him without involving specialists, and partnering with doctors is one of the things that NP's do best. She's always willing to take that phone call, or listen to me explain the care plan. In comparison, we've had experiences with doctors where we asked to talk to a specialist, and they took umbrage, or claimed they didn't have time. Now, I'm sure there are NP's out there who might be the same way, but we haven't encountered them yet.

Another reason that I believe that NP's fare so well in studies (and a potentially confounding variable) is that as a percentage of practitioners women outnumber men as NP's verses MD's https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/well/doctors-male-female-women-men-heart.html . I believe that female NP's may be even more prone to listen than female doctors and less likely to substitute their expert opinion which may sometimes be based more on ego, than evidence based practice. Then again I am biased and my null hypothesis is that MD's are often ego inflated windbags at a higher rate than are NP's.

[Oldmahubbard]

Tee hee, love the null hypothesis, but it's just plain wrong.

MD's have such a higher rate of ego inflated windbaggery (ok there is no such word), that there is no comparison.

As a result, NP's are whipping their gluteus maximus with our lesser education in many situations.

[FullGlass, BSN, MSN, NP]

15 minutes ago, Oldmahubbard said:

Tee hee, love the null hypothesis, but it's just plain wrong.

MD's have such a higher rate of ego inflated windbaggery (ok there is no such word), that there is no comparison.

As a result, NP's are whipping their gluteus maximus with our lesser education in many situations.

I am appalled at the egocentrism of many doctors. In addition, I've seen cases of a primary care doc trying to treat a patient when the patient really needs to see a specialist. Primary care doc spends several months on the patient, accomplishes nothing. Patient comes to see me, I refer and the specialist address the issue immediately! This sort of thing is a waste of time and money.