Evidence Used To Oppose This Bill
Evidence Used To Oppose This Bill
The bill seeking to grant full practice authority to nurse practitioners, which was first introduced in 2015, is a bill that requires reconsideration before plunging into medical practice crisis. The bill-making process seeks to make a bill to be an operational law. The process that begins with sponsoring the bill and the entire lawmaking process in the Senate will ensure that any proposition that successfully undergoes due process becomes law (Zero to Three, 2014). However, the bill passed the Assembly Committee on Business and Professions on December 3, 2018, and thus there is a need to mobilize various evidence-based actions against this bill.
A nurse practitioner is an advanced-level practice nurse whose qualifications are far less than a physician’s. The nurse practitioner is trained and is qualified to play roles such as interpretation of diagnostic and laboratory tests, diagnosing illness and diseases, prescribing medication, and give a treatment plan among others (Lowe et al., 2012). However, the qualification of a nurse practitioner is considered flimsy owing to minimal patient contact time. Various authorities have hinted the patient contact of a nurse practitioner is less or equal to 3% of that of physician and thus clearly indicating that the nurse practitioner is less qualified to be granted the full practice.
There is this view that the NPs are undertrained and those offering full practice service may lead to complications. To avoid difficulties, the NPs need to have the minimum requirements which include having adequate contact times, at least a masters degree and other credentials which will serve as the equivalents (Iglehart, 2013). This will, therefore, give them enough qualifications since adequate academic qualifications and patient contact, thus guarantees.
In the United, States physicians go through four-year graduate school training, undergo a four-year training to earn a medical school degree and complete a four-year minimum residency. This imparts adequate skills and experience to be able to undertake the full practice. As compared to the nurse practitioners, they have minimal patient contact and a minimum period of experience, as well as training since the nursing course, is mainly focused on the patient care and not diagnosis and prescription (Lowe, 2012). Allowing the nurses the full practices will, therefore, cause many complications in the medical practice in the country and thus dangerous for the entire country.
In the article which was penned in the New York Times by Sandeep Jauhar and entitled Nurses are not Doctor argues that what primary care practitioners can offer is not what nurses can offer since the primary care practice is a challenging cognitive practice that demands a cognitive ability. The primary care which is guaranteed by full practice requires high-quality training which is offered to people with qualifications that reflect the cognitive ability (Sandeep, 2014). This, therefore, shows that the ability of NPs will not meet and they need to undertake the routine diagnosis, treatment, and prescription of medication.
Conclusively the nursing practitioners are missing a lot in as far as their training is concerned. They work under the watch of a physician and thus it shows that both their raining and their cognitive abilities indicate that they should not be granted full practice authority.
References
Iglehart, J. K. (2013). Expanding the role of advanced nurse practitioners—risks and rewards. The New England Journal of Medicine, 368(20):1935-41.
Lowe, G., Plummer, V., O’Brien, A. P., & Boyd, L. (2012). Time to clarify–the value of advanced practice nursing roles in health care. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 68(3), 677-685.
Sandeep Jauhar. Nurses are not doctors. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/30/opinion/nurses-are-not-doctors.html Zero to Three. How a bill becomes a law. Retrieved from https://www.zerotothree.org/resources/728-how-a-bill-becomes-
