Fix problems causing shortage of doctors

Expanding the role of nurse practitioners in the medical system seems to be a stopgap solution to the problem of doctor shortage. Indeed, the cost to train a nurse practitioner, even to the level of a doctorate, is less than to educate a doctor.

If the medical system is strained such that nurse practitioners and physicians assistants are needed to replace general practice doctors, then it logically follows that regulation, litigation and education have made general practice doctors economically obsolete.

This is a shame. A doctor, medical and veterinarian alike, is educated as a scientist, which grows the skills of deduction and creative problem solving. A nurse, being a technician, applies solutions from rote memory, and even if possessing a doctorate in nursing, is not a doctor.

Apart from expanding the number of students admitted to medical school, increasing residency pay and increasing Medicare reimbursement, a good solution to the problem of doctor shortage is to encourage and make paths available for nurse practitioners to migrate, through education, from nursing to being doctors. The alternative being promoted in 28 states is to further empower nurses without similarly asking them to shoulder the liability or hardship, which is driving medical students away from general practice and into either being hospitalists or specialists.

Further, with (hopefully temporary) increased government involvement in the medical industry, I fear that unless my symptoms fit into a category with which the nurse is well versed, I will go misdiagnosed. I hope to be wrong.

David Sheets

Toddville