Understanding educational pathways for NP, PA

ucbalumnus
Fri, 28 Jan 2022 18:55:46 +0000

parentologist:

Society seems to believe that one doesn’t need the education and training to become a board-certified MD to think - just to do procedures, when in fact, it is exactly the opposite! One needs only focused technical training to do a repetitive procedure, such as a bone marrow biopsy, whereas one needs a lot of education, plus years of clinical experience to recognize atypical presentations and properly diagnose and treat.

Which is why it seems odd that primary care specialties in medicine are among the lowest in pay and prestige among medical specialties, when primary care physicians need to have enough knowledge about anything that a patient may come in with in order to point the patient in the right direction as far as medical decisions go.

But where I am, it seems that primary care is still mainly MDs and DOs (not NPs).