AANP Wins Our First Ever “Hijacking the COVID-19” Award
We find it so pitiful when someone or some organization tries to profit off a catastrophe like this CV19 pandemic. We have mentioned others in past blog entries already but nothing compares to what the AANP is trying to do. They have used this crisis to aggressively politic and push for total independence by nurse practitioners. Forget the fact that their studies are totally flawed and without merit. You can search the endless blog entries in this blog that proves that.
The above video says it all but here it is in writing. We love that she says the NPs are the true heroes. Wow. We guess doctors, and every other medical staff member, are not important?
It sickens us that any organization would push their agenda during a time like this.
And now for a simple example (and there are tons more) showing why this should NOT happen:
NP who covers step down unit overnight called me to intubate a patient. (thankfully they’re not credentialed for this, yet)
NP: He’s tachypneic and he can’t keep this up for much longer.
Me: Why is he tachypneic?
NP: I don’t know. I tried calming him down with benzos but he’s still breathing fast.
Me: His x-ray looks clear, no metabolic acidosis on his labs, his blood gas shows a slight pure respiratory alkalosis, he’s been admitted for some time so he’s not withdrawing and didn’t overdose on aspirin….does he have a fever?
NP: No
Me: You’ve checked it recently?
NP: Yes
Me: Well, we’re missing something here because I still don’t understand why he’s tachypneic and isolated respiratory alkalosis doesn’t sound like a reason to intubate. Let me meet you at bedside and let’s take a look at him together.
[At bedside]
Me: You sure he doesn’t have a fever and you’ve checked it recently?
NP: Yes
[Nurse overhears and checks temperature.]
Nurse: 102, doctor.No differential diagnosis, no critical thinking. They are nurses. Plain and simple.
Are there good NPs out there. Absolutely. We believe, like the AAFP, in a team-based approach so mistakes, like the above, never happen. We should never settle for poor care. Online “doctorates” in degree mills are a joke. It looks bad for all NPs but the AANP doesn’t obviously care. They have an agenda and now it makes doctors suspicious of all NPs, which is an injustice to the good ones.
Whatever happened to collaboration? Instead, the AANP is all about competition.
Training and education matter and they matter even more during this pandemic.
We want to say congratulations to the AANP for your disgusting attempt to use this COVID-19 pandemic for your own personal gains and want to offer you our first ever “Hijacking the COVID-19” Award.
It’s well deserved.
(Note: any nasty comments by militant NPs are just deleted so don’t waste your time).
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I have been an APRN for over 25 years. Most physicians I have worked with over the years consider me clinically proficient and a competent health care provider. I know what I know. But, I also know what I don’t know. Some young NP’s and NP students ask me about whether or not NP’s should be able to practice independently and are usually surprised when I say absolutely NOT! I am definitely in favor of always maintaining a collaborative practice with a physician. I am perfectly comfortable seeing most patient’s by myself, but I know there are gaps in my education in comparison to that of a physician’s. If I were to do it all over again, I would probably have gone to med school rather than entering an NP program, but I didn’t. So, I am comfortable with my role as being part of a team. My MSN 26 years ago was more work than the “DNP” programs are today and I find it unacceptable that there is no minimal amount of years in practice as an RN before nurses can enter NP programs.
I have no problem working in collaboration with physicians. There are some bad physicians of course and I have worked with some whose clinical acumen was definitely sub par. But, they are the exception and not a valid reason to think that we should be able to practice with complete autonomy. I have cringed over the past few years along with you at the stance that the AANP has taken. The ANA is a little better, but not far behind.
Used to see symptoms and not dx all the time from NPs who were allowed to see AND ADMIT patients in our ER. The other cute trick they had was to ask me what antibiotic I wanted them to start…I’d tell them to ask the ER doctor who (supposedly) had oversight. Figured I could always change that after the fact.
All is easily condensed to one question – what is the level of acceptable death? I think of the Time of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, when innocent people were killed now and again, and the level of death was acceptable. And of Vietnam, when the level of death of American soldiers was acceptable. Medicine is becoming more profitable when we set standards of the level of acceptable death is expanded, the principle that “nature takes its course” is worshiped, and death can be blamed on the deceased, and no other entity or corporation can be blamed for the quaint concept of “failure to deliver care.”
Could we have superb medicine? Of course. First-world countries do. If we have the sophistication to run Disney World, we have the sophistication to run medicine.
But we also run public education, which is the performance goal for the New Medicine.. It is a bloated, inefficient machine with not enough money. The Defence Department is a bloated, inefficient machine that works because its money hole is bigger.
These are just the “respiratory alkalosis” of a dying society. Inability to oxygenate does not last long when untreated. It spontaneously resolves. So will America.
I have always wondered what all the letters after her (or other ) serve.
They seem to proliferate as their education progresses. Does that make me; B.S.,M.S.,D.O. It would look good on my clinic white coat.
NO! NO! NO!
No unsupervised, independent practice under any conditions for under qualified NP’s.
EDUCATION AND TRAINING MATTER!!!
My friend a plastic surgeon, is now unemployed with overhead continuing. At the hospital he usually works, the Nurse Practitioners feel free to call him for simple lacerations and dog bites. They took a nice paying job in the ER but it is ok to say they dont feel comfortable and threaten EMTALA. By the way, that ER had only seen one virus case at the time of this writing. They dont even ask their ER doctor, who despite half the residency, earns twice as much as the PS and no overhead. He has no way to follow up, and of course is unemployed, and the lacerations are either uninsured or Medicaid. But even insurance pays $100 or so. And the Hospital DOES not pay plastic surgeons for call, but does pay other specialties.
So the NPs are experts when they want to be, and when they dont want to be then they can duck out.
Also FYI plastic surgeons payment for this is based on the NP with no overhead, spending 10 minutes putting in stitches. They get nothing extra for their overhead (in fact it is reduced as in facility), the fact it takes two hours to come in and do it and return, and all the extra training.
Glad you had oversight of this NP so that the proper treatment was given to this patient. Looking at the NP’s responses made me wonder when our “treatment” for tachypnea (a symptom and not a diagnosis) became giving benzo’s and intubation instead of trying to actually figure out the problem.