Roles of a Nurse Practitioner and a Physicians Assistant - Essay Example

? Roles of a Nurse Practitioner and a Physician’s Assistant Comparison And Contrast of the Roles of a Nurse Practitioner and a Physician’s Assistant Introduction The roles of a nurse practitioner and those of a physician assistant tend to be confused though they are somehow different. The nurse practitioners tend to focus on a specific specialty as opposed to physician assistant whose training is quite general and focuses on different specialties. Physician assistant was a cadre developed to curb the shortage of medical practitioners particularly in underserved regions. Physician assistants carry out their practice in partnership with medical practitioners and work in almost all specialties in the field of medicine. Physician assistants are trained in such a way that they can play the roles of a physician if need be. Creation of the physician assistant unit was crucial in many regions since the number of medical practitioners is considerably low. Additionally, this helped many countries provide health care in rural areas, inner sections of the city, as well as other areas where there are shortages of medical practitioners. As opposed to physician assistants, nurse practitioners tend to be somehow independent on their practice and are less reliant on physicians. Just like physician assistants, nurse practitioners can play most of the roles played by a physician. This paper focuses on comparing nurse practitioners and physician assistants by considering aspects such as their roles, education, job description, and scope of practice, job opportunities, and the scope of the practice. Education Education wise, a physician assistant is required to undergo a training program that takes about 26 months. Additionally, the physician assistants are required to have passed the national certified exam and holder of practice license. Furthermore, physician assistants are supposed to have accomplished clinical rotation in different specialties (Buppert, 2005; Miller & Kelli, 2012). A nurse practitioner is a registered nurse who has attained a master’s degree in nursing in addition to extensive clinical experience. The extensive clinical experience should be gained during the 12 to 16 months that nurse practitioners are supposed to spend treating mild as well as serious illnesses while under an instructors observation (Hooker, Cawley, & Leinweber, 2010; Buppert, 2005). Job Description Physician assistants are trained and certified health care professional that are supposed to work under the supervision of medical physician. On the other hand, nurse practitioners are trained and registered nurses who are certified and can thus conduct medical as well as operational tasks with minimal or no supervision from a physician. Physician assistants work in a wide range of medical fields. Majority of them are involved in providing primary care. Other duties may fall in other units such as assisting in surgical procedures, practicing internal medicine, emergency medicine, as well as in pediatric subspecialties. They may practice in hospitals, group physician practice, in rural or community health centers or as solo physician practice (Hooker, Cawley, & Leinweber, 2010; Buppert, 2005). Nurse practitioners are free to practice as private physicians after being certified. They also serve in the hospital inpatient and outpatient. Additionally, nurse practitioners work in rural health clinic where they offer community-based primary care. They can also work in the emergency department (Buppert, 2005). Role Responsibility Physician assistants practice in association with medical practitioners or physicians. Their role is interdependent with that of the physicians in what is described as “negotiated performance autonomy.” The roles of a physician assistant include taking the medical history of a patient and carrying out other investigations regarding the patients’ health. They are also responsible of examining the patients, assisting the physician in offering treatment to the patients, ordering for lab test as well as x-ray, which he or she is also supposed to interpret. Additionally a physician assistant is supposed to diagnose patients, make prescriptions, offer counseling on preventative health care, in addition to assisting during surgery. Generally, a practitioner assistant can play all the roles of a physician but must consult the physician before performing some of the roles. In conjunction with the physicians, physicians assistants coordinate operations in satellite clinic offices in addition to offering on-call services (Miller, & Kelli, 2012; Hooker, Cawley, & Leinweber, 2010). On the other hand, the roles of a nurse practitioner are quite similar to those of a physician assistant but the nurse practitioner is free to choose whether to practice independently or as part of a team. The roles of a nurse practitioner include diagnoses and management of most sicknesses. As opposed to physician assistants who focus a lot on treatment, nurse practitioners tend to focus on health maintenance, prevention of diseases, education patients as well as offering counseling to patients in different medical setups (Buppert, 2005). Scope of Practice  Physician assistants are found in almost all specialties. However, most remain in primary care though they are capable of playing almost all the roles of a physician. Nevertheless, physician assistants can choose to specialize in areas such as general internal medicine, orthopedics, general surgery, emergency medicine, and geriatrics. The specialties tend to general in nature. A good example is a practitioner assistant who has specialized in surgery and yet is supposed to provide preoperative and post-operative care in addition to working as an assistant to the surgeon during major surgery. Physician assistants can also act as supervisors in medical facilities (Hooker, Cawley, & Leinweber, 2010). As opposed to the field of physician assistant where the professionals rarely specialize in any areas, nurse practitioners can choose to specialize and practice in different but specific areas. The specialties include family nurse practitioners, Occupational Nurse Practitioners, Certified Nurse Midwives, Women’s Health Care Nurse Practitioners, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists, Neonatal Nurse Practitioners, Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, Geriatric Nurse Practitioners and Adult Nurse Practitioners (Miller, & Kelli, 2012; Buppert, 2005). Job Opportunities Since nurse practitioners are free to carry out independent practice after certification, they tend to prefer working independently. Additionally, most governments tend to employ more nurse practitioners as compared to physician assistants. On the other hand, physician assistants are trained on a wide range of practices and are thus capable of acquiring jobs in different departments (Buppert, 2005). Salary wise, nurse practitioners tend to earn more as compared to physician assistant. This can be partly attributed to the fact that nurse practitioners often work for more hours as compared to physician assistants. One advantage that physician assistants have is that they can change their line of career in the course of their practice without having to go back for further training. This exposes them to a wider range of opportunities as opposed to nurse practitioners whose opportunities ted to be limited because they specialize early in their career and follow a specific line of training (Buppert, 2005). Future of the Role It is quite hard to predict the future of the roles of physician assistants, who tend share their roles with the physicians. It is even more difficult to tell if the further evolution of the scope of practice of physician assistants will evolve further to make them less dependent on physicians. However, the roles are expected to expand with the development of new treatments and medical equipment. The barriers for physician assistants to practice independently are increasingly being removed which suggests that they might be allowed to practice independently in future. Additionally, physician assistants are likely to start specializing in specific areas to make them more efficient. Nurse practitioners are likely to go into independent practice to avoid competition that has arisen after creation of physician assistant unit (Miller, & Kelli, 2012). Conclusion Both nurse practitioners and physician assistants play crucial roles in providing medical care. Their roles tend to intermingle though the nurse practitioners tend to be independent in their practice as opposed to physician assistants who work in collaboration with physicians. Additionally, physician assistants tend to have a wide range of roles due to the generalized nature of their work. However, nurse practitioners tend to specialize in specific areas. Some of the roles of a nurse practitioner include health maintenance, prevention of diseases in addition to medical counseling. The roles of a physician assistant are close to those of a physician and include examination of patients, diagnoses, participating in surgical procedures, ordering and interpreting x-rays and lab tests in addition to disease prevention. Nurse practitioners tend to acquire government employment more easily that the physician assistants. However, physician assistants are advantaged since they can change their line of practice without further training and thus have a wide range of opportunities at their disposal. References Buppert, C. (2005). The Primary Care Provider's Guide To Compensation And Quality: How To Get Paid And Not Get Sued, Volume 1. New York: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Hooker, R., Cawley J., $ Leinweber, W. (2010). Career Flexibility of Physician Assistants and the Potential for More Primary Care. Health Affairs, Vol 29(5):880-886.  Miller, R. K., & Kelli, W., K. (2012). Chapter 137: Nurse Practitioner & Physician Assistants. In, Healthcare Business Market Research Handbook (pp. 544-548). Richard K. Miller & Associates. Read More