[amedstudent1]

I would have to disagree with the title of this submission. Rather I’d phrase it to you like this:

Healthcare is a team sport. There’s multiple well defined and some not so defined roles to fill. Some people are happy to take orders and just do what they’re told. Others want some autonomy but don’t wish to or want to care about anything other than their topic of interest. Yet others want of lurk in the background and assist after the main event is over. Etc. but you get the point. Where doctors come in is they’re usually either the one overseeing the ultimate care of the patient, or are called in as the subject matter expert in a certain field.

Or to sum it up crudely, you do medicine because you want to be the boss. You do nursing/PA because you want to work with a boss.

As an aside, the way our health system is structured in Australia makes NP quite unpopular. We don’t have PA here and NP operate under direct supervision. We have a decent proportion of them in rural areas (they basically keep the rural and smaller regional hospitals running) who earn doctor pay. But in our metropolitan areas only very few exist. Reasons I would guess is due to cost. They get paid above a junior doctor but you can assign more responsibility to a junior doctor and also abuse them more (you can’t pay an NP for 40 hours after working them 80 hours a week with no breaks).