Physician Assistant Vs Nurse Practitioner

In the hectic overflow of United States healthcare, physician’s patient loads are alleviated by the ever-growing army of mid-level providers. The two main career fields of these positions are known as physician assistant and nurse practitioners. Often functioning nearly identically in their service of healthcare, they are at their core serving the same cause but created in much different manners. Both have seen significant growth since their inception with increasing population of our nation and thusly patient populations. The growth of these professions are projected to continue this increasing trend and are ranked among the tops of careers with growing demand. Although competition between these two professions can be seen as an inevitable

The position of physician assistant was established at Duke University while Nurse practitioner was established at The University of Colorado. Both career fields were designed to be extensions of physicians, with the ability to write prescriptions, evaluate patients, perform exams and treat medically. Each position was and is still licensed based on the state of their practice and certified as official medical professionals by the United States Federal Government. Both nurse practitioners and physician assistants were designed to function as a part of the healthcare team, and more specifically, nurse practitioners were intended to further aid in the concept and actualization of disease prevention. The current standard of qualification for physician assistants is completion of a graduate physician assistant program that includes roughly 2000 clinical hours spent in multiple medical disciplines. Additionally, it is necessary for physician assistants to pass the Physician Assistant National Certifying exam (PANCE) prior to obtaining licensure. To maintain certification PAs must retake the certification exam every ten years, increased from the previous time

As mentioned previously, it is true that as mid-level providers both career designations may function nearly identically in one setting, they are actually based on two different models of practicing. Physician assistants are grounded in their medical model which is based on the disease-centered approach to healthcare, closely resembling that of a full physician. Alternately, nurse practitioners are based on the nursing model which is more patient-centered and focusses on long-term outcomes for the patient. A similarity in both physician assistants and nurse practitioners is their team-based approach to medicine. Being mid-level providers they are almost always working in the presence of many other members of the medical team, often much less independently than a typical physician. Due to this group-mentality, they are typically once piece of a larger effort toward improving a patient’s outcome. It is in this ideology that physician assistants and nurse practitioners may seem most similar at their core. Furthering their similar qualities is their shared scope of practice. Both are able to take histories, complete physical exams and procedures, prescribe medication, order labs, diagnose and treat diseases, give referrals to out-of-office specialties, and educate patients when necessary. Although