One of the main challenges facing medical students is the dilemma of deciding the healthcare career discipline to pursue. Many students have the urge of becoming health professionals, but they have no idea about the specific health service professionals that best suit them. Even though some students are driven by their passion and love to pursue a specific, majority tends to consider factors such as salary scale and working conditions for various healthcare career disciplines. Comparing health service professionals help gauge the professions based on essential factors such as salary scale, training and roles. There are various health service professionals, including pharmacists, physicians, certified nurse midwives, nurses, nurse practitioners, dentists and physician assistants (Shi and Singh, 2018). This paper will compare and contrast the physician assistant and nurse practitioner. The comparison will be based on factors such as practice requirements, roles, practice settings and training.
Similarities between Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners.
Both physician assistants and nurse practitioners are regarded as essential assets to the healthcare community, and they form part of advance practice providers (APP). The two professionals were created to meet the fast-growing primary care providers' demand (Rosenthal and Burchum, 2017).
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The minimum qualification for nurse practitioners and physician assistants is that they must attain at least a master degree in their respective fields. The students pursuing these two healthcare career paths undergo similar curriculum requirements, and they share some course units such as advanced health assessment and pharmacology.
Both nurse practitioners and physician assistant were formed in the mid-1960s after which they were designed to undergo a nearly similar training program which includes general patient care, diagnosis and patient examination. The two professionals have several day-to-day duties in common. The health professionals are expected to take of patients and people's health at large. Just as stated in the bible, the health professional is charged with the mandate of nursing the people, particularly the patients and ensuring that they are in good health condition. In the book of Exodus chapter 2 verses 7, the bible states, "Shall I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women that she may nurse the child for you?" (BBE, 2011). It was a word of consolation and hoped to Pharaoh's daughter. It shows that the role nurses is to look after people.
Differences between Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants
Even though the health service professionals have several things in common, there are other aspects which bring the difference between the two professionals. The differences are as follows:
An individual aspiring to be a nurse is required to attain post graduate certification called Master of Science in Nursing. On the other hand, a physician assistant should undergo specialized studies to attain a Masters degree in physician assistant studies.
Physician assistant programs require interested candidates to have done some volunteering work in the healthcare system or work experience in the same discipline. On the other hand, a student who wishes to pursue a master of science in nursing programs are expected to have registered nurse license, and this license must remain active throughout their practice (Bowden and Ball, 2016). Some of the work experience that physician assistant is expected to have to include phlebotomy, paramedic or nursing experience.
There is also variation in certification requirements for the two professionals. Even though the nurse practitioners' certification requirements vary, most national certifying agencies require every nurse practitioner to practice supervised clinical services for at least 500 hours while the physician assistants are expected to have completed not less than 2,00 hours before certification (Rudner and Kung, 2017). Nurse practitioners can change their specialties by acquiring additional certification exams of undergoing some additional training. However, this does not apply to physician assistants.
Conclusion
In conclusion, physician assistants and nurse practitioners are important professionals in healthcare setting; they provide healthcare services to patients. The two professionals are closely related, but at the same time, they have differences based on practice requirements, training and roles.
References
BBE, B. E. T. (2011). King James Version (KJV).
Bowden, B. S., & Ball, L. (2016). Nurse practitioner and physician assistant students' knowledge, attitudes, and perspectives of chiropractic. Journal of Chiropractic Education , 30 (2), 114-120.
Rosenthal, L., & Burchum, J. (2017). Lehne’s Pharmacotherapeutics for Advanced Practice Nurses and Physician Assistants-E-Book . Elsevier Health Sciences.
Rudner, N., & Kung, Y. M. (2017). An assessment of physician supervision of nurse practitioners. Journal of Nursing Regulation , 7 (4), 22-29.
Shi, L., & Singh, D. A. (2018). Essentials of US Health Care System with 2019 Annual Health Reform Update . Jones & Bartlett Learning.
