4 ms·
This is a bad idea for a number of reasons. Why water down the quality of physicians rather than increase the number of Physician Assistants or Nurse Practition
by phren0logy 17y ago
This is a bad idea for a number of reasons. Why water down the quality of physicians rather than increase the number of Physician Assistants or Nurse Practitioners? They are more than capable of providing basic preventative care.
They are also less expensive for the system.
- frig 17y agoWhat in what I suggested suggests that the quality of physicians would be materially watered-down. It will be your word against mine but I assert that there are plenty of people fully capable of becoming competent physicians getting turned away from medical school each year. They are turned away because the schools only have N slots per year and the turned-away applicants are not amongst the best N applicants that year. It's unclear how far down the applicant pool you could go before you start allowing in the fundamentally incapable, but I have a hard time believing the current matriculating class size is anywhere near that threshold. I don't disagree the world could clearly use more NPs. The issue I can foresee though is that medicine is getting ever more complicated and specialized with time; there's an upper limit on what NPs are capable of covering after which point you need physicians.