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Originally Posted by analog
Do you know what a nurse practitioner's license allows them to do, and not do? Do you know the procedures a nurse practitioner is compelled by their license to follow when treating a patient without the presence of a licensed physician? Do you know how their scope of knowledge relates to how they diagnose patients, and the difference in the way a nurse practitioner diagnoses a patient vs a doctor's diagnosis?
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Yes, I do. Are you saying that the above makes nurse practitioners immune to a lawsuit? Are you saying that nurse practitioners don't need malpractice insurance, or that theirs should be cheaper than a physician's?
Are you saying that any health professional will not demand pay commensurate with the risk of contracting a career-ending disease, such as hepatitis, or AIDS?
Are you saying that a nurse practitioner doesn't have to deal with OSHA, HIPAA, time spent sterilizing instuments, taking CE, or any of the myriad things that have to take place in order to provide patient care, and which are not readily apparent to anyone who only sees the doctor walk into the room, ask a few questions, and write a prescription? For the sake of argument, I will specify (fantasize?) that this physician has already paid off the $150,000 in loans he or she had to take out to get through four years of college and four years of medical school, his staff never asks for annual raises, and he's independently wealthy, so there is no need to save for retirement.
However, I will point out that SOMEONE has to shoulder these costs, whether the nurse practitioner is operating essentially independently, or under the direct supervision of a physician.
My point, which you misinterpreted, is that there are REASONS it costs $100, or whatever the lay public thinks is too much, to get a prescription.
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I guess it's easier to be sarcastic in a passive-agressive way when you don't know what you're talking about. I have no idea where the gross lack of faith in these licensed medical professionals is coming from.
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So much for civility in the forums. I wish I were surprised.
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A nurse practitioner is not going to violate their license by telling you to go home and sleep it off. If they're not 100% on a diagnosis, they're going to tell you to see a doctor.
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Anyone who has worked in an emergency room will tell you that going home and sleeping it off is precisely what a substantial number of emergency room visitors need to do. The ER has become a de facto family doctor for a great many people, some of whom come in when their kid has a skinned knee. Why shouldn't they? They aren't paying for it (the taxpayers are).
I have no idea on what you base your extreme faith in nurse practitioners. While I don't know many of them, I know the head of one physicians' assistant school, and neither he nor anyone he knows is willing to guarantee that they will be right 100% of the time. Diagnosis is just too tricky.
Besides, medical professionals get sued for bad outcomes, regardless of whether or not they made an error.