[Terretta]

> Some people need to be in control and call the shots... If you can live a fulfilled life as a nurse or PA, though, it's a much better choice...

Aside from nurse or PA, is APRN or ARNP. Not the same thing as a nurse at all.

My wife is an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse aka Nurse Practitioner. She's responsible for several hundred beds in a long term acute care facility, planning and setting the care for all these patients with the nursing staff carrying out her orders. MDs check their patients in and basically hand them off, leaving the critical care decisions in her hands while the MDs check back every 30 - 90 days, maybe. In our state she doesn't need to practice under some MD's license, she's a licensed care provider and prescriber in her own right. She spends a lot of time in differential diagnosis, being House. She's the most senior practicing medical person in the building.

As far as I can tell, today's NP is the general/internal medicine doc of the 1950s, with all the control and all the responsibility. If you want to be responsible for overall medical care for patients, rather than a particular specialty, understanding and improving patient health end to end, this seems like a reasonable way to go.