Changing State Laws Push Up Patient Consults With Alternative Medical Staff
Media outlets explain how patients are increasingly meeting with physician assistants and nurse practitioners alongside traditional doctors as shifting state laws help hospitals deal with the ongoing physician shortage. Nurse strikes, pay for tribal health workers, and more are also reported.
USA Today:
Physician Assistants, Nurse Practitioners Or Doctors: What To Know
The nurse practitioner will see you now. It’s not the phrase most people are accustomed to hearing, but it’s increasingly the case, with patients more likely than ever to see providers with advanced degrees, such as physician assistants and nurse practitioners, instead of doctors. The physician shortage, a growing demand on health care and more people graduating with advanced degrees helped expand their presence at physicians offices. But what does that mean for patients? (Rodriguez, 8/20)
The Washington Post:
Medicine Without Doctors? State Laws Are Changing Who Treats Patients.
Arlene Wright has been a nurse for more than 20 years in Fort Myers, Fla. She began working in hospitals as a teenage candy striper in Upstate New York, progressing through an associate’s degree in nursing, then a bachelor’s, then a master’s, then finally a doctorate of nursing practice in 2013.Wright has always told patients she’s a nurse practitioner, she says. She doesn’t flaunt her doctorate or try to mislead patients into thinking she has an MD. Still, when Florida lawmakers began considering a bill that would have prevented her from using her title, Wright was taken aback. (Avi-Yonah, 8/20)
More news about health care workers —
Los Angeles Times:
Nurses Start 10-Day Strike At Garfield Medical Center
Nurses launched a 10-day strike Friday at Garfield Medical Center in Monterey Park, accusing hospital management of failing to address short staffing that they said could jeopardize patients, broken and substandard equipment, and inadequate safeguards to protect nurses from violent attacks. (Reyes, 8/18)
KFF Health News:
Tribal Health Workers Aren’t Paid Like Their Peers. See Why Nevada Changed That
Linda Noneo turned up the heat in her van to ward off the early-morning chill that persists in northern Nevada’s high desert even in late June. As the first rays of daylight broke over a Christian cross on the top of a hill near the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone colony, she drove toward her first stop to pick up fellow tribal members waiting for transportation to their medical appointments. Noneo is one of four community health representatives for the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone, which the tribe said includes about 1,160 enrolled members. The role primarily involves driving tribal members to their health appointments, whether in Fallon, a city of just under 10,000, or Reno, more than 60 miles west. Noneo said she and her colleagues have also taken patients as far away as Sacramento, California, and Salt Lake City, round trips of nearly 400 and 1,000 miles, respectively. (Rodriguez, 8/21)
A British nurse is found guilty of killing seven babies —
CNN:
'I Am Evil,' Wrote British Nurse Found Guilty Of Murdering Seven Babies In Her Care
A British nurse has been found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six others at the hospital where she worked, making her the country’s worst baby serial killer in recent times. Lucy Letby, 33, harmed babies in her care by injecting air into their blood and stomachs, overfeeding them with milk, physically assaulting them and poisoning them with insulin, Manchester Crown Court in northern England heard. ... The UK government has ordered an independent inquiry into the murders, including “how concerns raised by clinicians were dealt with.” (Wilkinson and Haq, 8/18)
