| > Exactly. (Experienced) Nurses can do ALL of the basic stuff we currently use doctors for. That’s not true. They do completely different jobs. Some experienced nurses could do some things that we currently require doctors to do. Other experienced nurses have problems doing basic dosage calculation. The main difference that addition to med school being much more selective, rigorous, and longer, residency is regimented, standardized, supervised, and evaluated in a way that nursing experience isn’t. There are entire teams of doctors who spend hours every month discussing each resident’s progress (I know because my wife runs the resident program for her department and I overhear the discussions in the background). You might have one nurse who worked in the ER for 5 years who can diagnose appendicitis as well as a doctor, but another who worked there for 20 years who couldn’t even begin to do that. And since diagnosing appendicitis is not part of their job description, both could have absolutely stellar performance reviews. And the nurse who can diagnose appendicitis, might be terrible at other tasks normally handled by a doctor. The solution for this is to put them through more standardized on the job training/evaluation, but you’ve just reinvented residency at that point. That’s the thing people don’t understand about residency, it’s as much evaluation as it is training. No amount of on the job experience is equivalent because job experience isn’t rigorously regimented, and evaluated. |