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Discussion

Nurse to Physician

Has anyone here made the transition from RN or NP to MD/DO?

I’m sure this topic has been touched on before, and I do realize that this is a NURSING site but I would like everyone to remain a level of honest objectivity.

I’m 27 going on 28. I’m a RN/CCRN and have been for six years. I’m suppose to start NP school this fall. The thing is that the closer I get to starting the more I’m realizing that this may be not what I want to do, and it may only be a “comfort move” for me.

I pursued nursing with practical intentions. I think deep down I always wanted to be a physicist but unfortunately life/finances held other plans for me. I so I went the nursing route, unfortunately the deeper into my nursing education I got the more I realized how incompatible I was with the nursing theory/model.

I feel nursing is too focused on the humanities and psychosocial sciences for my personal liking. Even on the graduate level, I observe my colleagues and the “projects” and “papers” they have to churn out and I find them exhaustive.

While I think I could make the best of it myself and self-study and take charge of my own learning, I also feel that as it stands, in order to provide complete care, there is no better route other than the study of medicine.

Are there any NPs that can honestly reflect on their scope, and I don’t mean your legal scope, I mean how prepared do you really feel to take on any kind of patient/diagnosis within your specialty?(be it family, emergency, or cardiology).

Do you honestly believe you have the training that is on par with that of a board certified physician in that specialty? This is not meant to be inflammatory, rather reflective and retrospective.

NPs offer amazing contributions to healthcare, filling gaps where necessary. They take on the more routine and established patients, this leaves room for the physician to step in and provide medical expertise to those patients that present outside the algorithmic confines of what NPs may adhere to.

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    • Admin

    Hello @QuestionableTimes and welcome to allnurses.com.

    We moved your topic to the Student NP forum for the best response.

    Good luck with your decisions.

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    Not sure what advice I can give but I am graduating as an acute care NP this Summer and I feel drastically unprepared.
    Everyone loves to bemoan that school never prepares you for practice and sure it can’t 100% prepare you but I don’t even feel 30% ready to practice. I’m paying thousands of dollars only to make a separate curriculum on the side to learn from in my own. I chose a reputable brick and mortar school and the curriculum is a joke. None of my prefessors or preceptors (many of whom are graduates of the program) can teach or explain concepts at deeper levels at all. It is embarrassing.
    If your situation permits go for med school OR read med school text books and do lots of USMLE/comlex questions while in NP school and go for an NP fellowship like I will be doing.
    Had I known it would be this bad I would’ve tried my hand at PA school. I spent all this money on my education and still have to teach myself more than I should have to.

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    • Guides
    On 2/21/2020 at 9:47 AM, QuestionableTimes said:


    I pursued nursing with practical intentions. I think deep down I always wanted to be a physicist but unfortunately life/finances held other plans for me. I so I went the nursing route, unfortunately the deeper into my nursing education I got the more I realized how incompatible I was with the nursing theory/model.

    If you want to be a "physicist", go do a science degree.

    If you want to be a physician, go to medical school.

    If you are incompatible with the nursing model, change careers.

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    There is no new provider that feels 100% prepared after finishing school, whether it be NP, PA, or MD. MDs and DOs have the advantage of internship and residency, which provides a lot of training and experience.

    The nursing model is a different model than the medical model. If you don't like it, then apply to PA or med school.

    Personally, I was terrified starting my first NP job. The new PA felt the same way. The first 6 months are hardest, and by the end of the first year, one should be reasonably comfortable.

    Since I've been to NP school, I do not feel there was an undue amount of fluff in my curriculum. The only papers I wrote were on clinical topics, and that is a great way to gain in-depth knowledge of a topic. Any graduate student must learn how to conduct research as well as how to evaluate research. That requires writing some papers.

    Doctors have told me that they felt there was some fluff in their own programs. In Europe, it common for med school to be only 3 years.

    Yes, I have known RNs who went on to become MDs. So have some NPs and PAs. If you want to be an MD, then by all means, go for it. Only you know what is best for you.

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    • Author
    18 hours ago, ghillbert said:

    If you want to be a "physicist", go do a science degree.

    If you want to be a physician, go to medical school.

    If you are incompatible with the nursing model, change careers.

    Context clues? I meant physician, clearly it was an autocorrect. No need for the smart remark. I think you understand well what you did.

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    • Author
    18 hours ago, All4NursingRN said:

    Not sure what advice I can give but I am graduating as an acute care NP this Summer and I feel drastically unprepared.
    Everyone loves to bemoan that school never prepares you for practice and sure it can’t 100% prepare you but I don’t even feel 30% ready to practice. I’m paying thousands of dollars only to make a separate curriculum on the side to learn from in my own. I chose a reputable brick and mortar school and the curriculum is a joke. None of my prefessors or preceptors (many of whom are graduates of the program) can teach or explain concepts at deeper levels at all. It is embarrassing.
    If your situation permits go for med school OR read med school text books and do lots of USMLE/comlex questions while in NP school and go for an NP fellowship like I will be doing.
    Had I known it would be this bad I would’ve tried my hand at PA school. I spent all this money on my education and still have to teach myself more than I should have to.

    That is my biggest fear. I’m all for treating the patient as opposed to the disease, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t learn the disease in depth and understand the correlations between the pathophysiology, the symptoms, the treatments, and so forth. I want to understand *how* the drugs work, the biochemistry of different aspects of physiology (endocrine, cellular mechanism, and so forth), much like is taught in CRNA school - but I don’t want to practice anesthesia. I want a solid education in physiology. I am all for self-teaching, but I shouldn’t be paying a school thousands to not receive a quality education.

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    1 hour ago, QuestionableTimes said:

    That is my biggest fear. I’m all for treating the patient as opposed to the disease, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t learn the disease in depth and understand the correlations between the pathophysiology, the symptoms, the treatments, and so forth. I want to understand *how* the drugs work, the biochemistry of different aspects of physiology (endocrine, cellular mechanism, and so forth), much like is taught in CRNA school - but I don’t want to practice anesthesia. I want a solid education in physiology. I am all for self-teaching, but I shouldn’t be paying a school thousands to not receive a quality education.

    Look, if you want the most extensive education and training, go for MD or DO. End of story.

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