Relationship Between Nurse Practitioner and Medical Practitioner

7 Pages 1630 Words

Why Can't We All Just Get Along:
The Relationship between Nurse Practitioner and Medical Practitioner




There is a patient in front of you. You are a nurse practitioner; the individual beside you is a medical practitioner. Both of you have the same information. Both of you have the same goal, or do you? Do you want wellness for the patient, including the social, emotional, nutritional, and familial aspects of that patient’s life or do you want the injury/illness/infection gone and the patient back to routine living? They seem like divergent views, the nursing model and the medical model, but as the environment of healthcare changes, can a path be found so both can thrive?

Introduction
In Creative Nursing, Tim Porter-O’Grady (2003) discusses that we are moving into a new healthcare relationship with our patients, one that will increase the patient’s expectation of positivity and will require all professions to work in a seamless fashion. Healthcare is becoming patient–owned (Porter-O’Grady, 2003) and that type of pattern will necessitate “working ‘together’ rather than working ‘alongside’” (Davies C, 2000). We have moved into a new social-evolutionary age, one of information based social behaviors, instantaneous market fluctuations, longer life span, increasing chronicity, and strained resources. Because of these stressors, we must look at what we are doing and do it better.

One of the changes that are occurring is the emerging role of nurse practitioner. While this role in primary care has been around since 1965, it has been seen by most as a stopgap for decreasing medical resources and was not regarded, even by some in nursing, as a creditable resource. It is still largely misunderstood and globally underutilized. Part of this misunderstanding is the view of some medical practitioners who deem nurse practitioners as a threat to the exclusivity of the domain of...