The shortage in primary care physicians in the United States is quite evident by the large patient pools physicians and hospitals care for each and every day. With primary care physicians making moves toward the more focused and specific specialties, basic care for patients is at risk of becoming less and less attainable.
In order to battle this primary care physician shortage, the doctorate of nursing program has been established providing for advanced education in the field of nursing aimed at enhancing patient care and eliminating the primary care physician shortage. The programs are set to educated current and newly licensed nurses to the level of doctorate, thus creating a new health care provider, the Dr. RN.
The official name for the graduates of the doctorate of nursing program will be DrNP or DNP. DrNP stands for Doctor of Nurse Practitioner. The training provided to those who enroll in the new educational programs will be trained to provide more thorough care in the fields of coordination of care (with other physicians) and basic health care treatment and prevention.
Nurse Practitioners have been licensed to provide patient care for many years. These nurse of advanced degree are able to see patients in both a private setting and in compliment of a primary care physician setting. The Nurse Practitioner has full rights to write prescriptions for medications and refer patients to outside doctors for extended and specialized forms of care.
The difference between the Nurse Practitioner and the DrNP will be in the title and in the function as primary care physician. The training to attain the title of DrNP is currently established at more than 200 nursing school across the United States. After the extended educational requirements are completed, the nurses will take a standardized exam offered by the National Board of Medical Examiners.
While the need for more primary care physicians is evident in the health care field, many on both sides of the medical fence are debating the effects of this new program on both the field of nursing and the field of medicine.
Advocates for the nursing profession are worried that this new advanced education program will increase the shortage of basic care nurses in the health care setting. With a nursing shortage of more than one million nurses by the year 2016, this number may grow even larger if more and more established nurses choose to enroll in the DrNP programs in order to advance their careers and obtain a higher income than the traditional nurse currently earns.
On the other hand, advocates for the medical side of the debate profess that no matter how educated a nurse may be, the DrNP program will in no way teach the nurse to care for patients in the same way that a doctors education has prepared them for the intricate details of primary care.
The primary care physician shortage will continue to rise with an overall shortfall of physicians reaching in the hundreds of thousands by the year 2020. The DrNP program can certainly help to ease the burden on the primary care physician and provide basic health care for the millions of persons who will be turned away from primary care physicians who simply can not take on additional patients. But, the effect of the movement from a basic skills nurse to a DrNP will undoubtedly throw the nursing profession into an even higher shortage.
