Compare and contrast the role of a Nurse Practitioner and a Physician's Assistant - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... 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 ...Download file to see next pagesRead More