Practicing NPs and PAs have rigorous education
Hello again, dear read-ers, and welcome to another edition of our ongoing con-versation. We're very happy that, a little more than a year into our column, we continue to hear from you. How are your New Year's resolutions faring thus fax? If you have any success sto-ries, or thoughts on how to stay (or get back) on track, we'd love to hear them.
• We've received a lot of feedback on the column about nurse practitio-ners (also referred to as NPs) and phy-sician assistants (also known as PM). Several letter-writers corrected our use of an apostrophe in referring to the profession of physician assistant. It may seem trivial but in fact that's a crucial difference between "physi-cian's assistant" and "physician assis-tant," and it's about autonomy. A phy-sician assistant is a clinician in her or his own right. We regret (and won't repeat) the error.
• In that same win (and in the same column) we neglected to fully state the educational requirements to become a nurse practitioner. Vicki, whose daughter is a NP, filled in the details: "Nurse practitioners must have a Master of Science in nursing," she wrote. "At the University of Memphis, the NP must take an exit exam about four weeks prior to graduation (with a passing grade), or you don't gradu-ate with that class (extra pressure!). Once the exit exam is passed, the NP has to take state boards to actually become licensed." Sandra, an Advanced Practice Reg-istered Nurse (APRN) in Kansas, points out that a Master of Science is, in fact, the minimum educational re-quirement for a nurse practitioner: "In our state, NPs will no longer be able to enter practice with a master's degree," Sandra wrote. "Entry into practice will require a doctorate, usually a DNP —Doctorate of Nursing Practice. In addition to the undergrad-uate nursing degree, NPs have hands-on nursing practice prior to going on to advanced prac-tice, which requires hundreds of hours of clinical training." And Rich, a physician assis-tant in Massachusetts, wrote to say NPs and PM are integral to the func-tioning of most hospitals and medi-cal centers: "Many NI's and PM work in ICUs, often seeing the most complex pa-tients, so this work is not just left to doctors. As any new resident in the ICU will tell you, it's an experienced ICU nurse who helps guide inexperi-enced interns and residents through the ICU, and likely other rotations as well. Medicine is more team-oriented today than ever before. "Also, more and more academic medical centers have residency pro-grams in oncology, surgery, cardiol-ogy and other fields of medicine for PM, so they can get advanced train-ing." We thank all the nurse practitio-ners and physician assistants who took the time to write regarding the column. One thing the letters had in common was a deep passion for medicine and an even deeper con-cern for the patients you treat. We agree with you that the practice of medicine is a calling, and we are both proud and honored to be your colleagues. For readers who want to learn more about these specialties, visit the American Association of Nurse Prac-titioners at aanp.org and the Ameri-can Academy of Physician Assistants at aapa.org.