Nurse Practitioners: A Benefit to Modern Healthcare
Patricia Wright
ID# 9402352
Athabasca University
English 255
Robert Wiznura
November 28, 2018
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Running head: NURSE PRACTITIONERS: A BENEFIT TO MODERN
Running head: NURSE PRACTITIONERS: A BENEFIT TO MODERN
Nurse Practitioners: A Benefit to Modern Healthcare
In Canada, nurse practitioners or NP’s have existed for about four decades. The nurse practitioners were initially employed in rural and remote areas where physician services were lacking. NP’s are “registered nurses with additional educational preparation and experience who possess and demonstrate the competencies to autonomously diagnose, order and interpret diagnostic tests, prescribe pharmaceuticals and perform specific procedures within their legislated scope of practice”. (Dicenso & Byrant-Lukosius, 2010, p. 3) Since the 1980’s, there has been an increase in educational programs and legislature for NP’s in Canada, particularly since the 1990s. NPs have been proposed as a key strategy to reducing healthcare costs and health care access. (Laurant et al., 2004) Barriers to NP utilization include physician resistance and worries about liabilities for nurse practitioner care. Despite the barriers, NP’s have been proposed to be a key strategy to reduce health care costs and increase care, patient satisfaction and access to health care for all.
In a qualitative study conducted to examine attitudes of physicians toward collaborative practice with NP’s, the results showed an ambivalence towards the NP role. (Katz & MacDonald, 2002) The physicians had concerns regarding the education level, licensing, quality of care for their patients and liability of having the NP working under them. They also had fears about the NP taking over traditional duties associated with medicine, loss of wages and the elimination of the family physician role. Public fears of decreased quality of care is also a paramount concern with the implementation of NP’s in primary care.
Fortunately, several decades of experience with NP’s and dozens of published studies
show that quality is not a problem and that nurse practitioners care for patients at least as well as physicians in many clearly defined areas of nursing and medical practice. (Bauer, 2010) A large and consistent body of supportive literature has appeared since the U.S. Ooffice of Technology Assessment (OTA) published its path‐breaking analysis of the quality of care provided by physicians and nurse practitioners in 1981 and every subsequent study published in peer‐reviewed journals has reinforced the OTA's conclusions that nurse practitioners can be substituted for physicians in a significant portion of medical services—ranging from 25% in some specialty areas to 90% in primary care—with at least comparable outcomes. (Bauer, 2010) Those who favor restricting the use of nurse practitioners have no real data to support their claims. The published literature supports the proposition that the quality of c...
