Greg Warren on Nurse Practitioners
Humor. It’s a great thing. But he got a lot of crap for this. So here is his response:
8 thoughts on “Greg Warren on Nurse Practitioners”
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Entertaining, Educating, and Criticizing Our Broken Healthcare System for 22 Years
I’m too impatient to watch the whole thing. I had an N.P. who I was the supervising physician and she did a good job. Deal was she got all the simple stuff and I got all the “difficult” patients. Had to have my thinking cap on every day. When she had a “difficult” patient and I mean someone with a big problem, she’d grab me and ask about it. Usually resulted in a hospital admission. I have no problem with physician supervised N.P’s. Debbie was older than me and retired a few years earlier than I. Still have contact with Christmas cards and her nice husband. The admin didn’t give me a “new “N.P.” as I was on my way out to retirement too. I would have been fine with a new one but it was thought I would be good to end my career without one. Shoot, I could’a broken an N.P. in for the next doc. I was a laid back doc and perfect for that situation. I guess that is why patients liked me so much.
Debbie swore just as much as I did about patients (in private) and we got along fine. Nice working relationship.
As long as N.P.’s have a supervising physician to go to for issues, I don’t have a problem with it. My N.P. was right next door to me in the office so she had access to ask me questions whenever needed. Like I said, when she came up to me with a question, I had to put my thinking cap on!
I don’t have a problem with N.P.’s working “DIRECTLY”, right next door to docs but my N.P. told me time and again that “some of these patients” are so complex, she was glad she could grab me and ask questions about the problem.
If some N.P.’s think they can go independent, “E’fffff” off because they can’t!!!!!! Do it and they’ll have a “witch” of a time getting malpractice insurance because they are too stupid to practice medicine on their own.
The whole point of comedy is to disarm and deflate, remind us not to take ourselves too seriously. So his response is awesome! I will have to go find more of his comedy.
Oh Greg is freaking priceless!!!!! Thanks for posting Doug!
What is Greg Warren saying? Think of him as a nervous passenger on the Titan submersible who’s asking – “How do I know that this thing is built OK for me to ride on?” The Titan submersible resembles, in many ways, American Medicine, which is run by the Stockton Rushes of Healthcare management.
Doing risky things that put people’s lives on the balance requires morality. It’s not a particularly specific morality in a metaphysical way – the questions do not ponder The Great Beyond.It is simply this – If I fail in what I do from an error in my judgment, and that people are harmed by my failure, what of it?
For US Navy submariners, the morality is that avoidable harm to one sailor even during extremes of combat is an unthinkable lapse, an unforgivable thing. If something cannot be constructed, designed and operated with the insistence that human safety is paramount, then it should not go under the waves. This moral status was codified in SubSafe, after the loss of the USS Thresher. That loss should not have happened. There is no restoration or remedy. Only the culture of learn, change and prevent must scrutinize what happened, so that it may never happen again.
The Stockton Rushes of medical care state that this moral stance can be compromised somewhat, in order that “efficiency” be improved. These are the bad guys, not the Nurse Practitioners or Physician Assistance, nor anyone on the front lines, who is no more protected by a weak system than the passengers on the Titan were.
The public is eager to heap blame on Stockton Rush, and opines arrogantly that a combination of carbon fiber and titanium is an obvious design flaw. That same ignorant public heaps on to the need to “reform our medical system,” endorsing compromise disguised as innovation. Nobody argues that NP’s aren’t 99% as accurate as doctors; in the way that the Titan was 99% safe in descents to great depths. It was, and there is no glaring error in NP practice, in the way that there is actually no glaring error in carbon fiber / titanium hulls, notwithstanding the opinions of the uninformed.
The culture of the private submersible business derived from the culture of SubSafe – that there are few unavoidable accidents. Eternal diligence and scrutiny are the price of protecting every life. The culture sounds rigid, and insistent on conformity to expensive testing and design modifications, and yes, many of these are as redundant and unnecessary as our insistence on single-use syringes and universal precautions.
People embrace “Modernism” with ignorant scorn for what has been done – throw that old stuff out the window! And go with the new and improved. This attitude is the mother, the father of the current Electronic Medical Record.
What is life worth, and more relevantly, what is YOUR life worth? Is it a point in the great statistical sea, or a unique entity to which greater concepts like submersible design should bow in honor to?
The Titan successfully endured many dives to the deep sea, and Mr. Rush and company deserves a thumbs-up for that. But that achievement is insignificant. Did they do ALL THAT THEY COULD to protect human life, without compromise from competing factors such as cost and weight? No, they didn’t, and Stockton Rush made that moral choice, over and over.
Why? He’s a man of the 21’st century, that’s all. Why can’t we learn our lesson from five deaths and extrapolate it to harm in American medicine? The loss of five lives in a submersible failure galvanized the world, and will lead to reforms. Meanwhile, the deaths of handfuls by handfuls of missed diagnoses and inadequate treatment simply goes over the statistical waterfall, with the reassurance in the boardroom, “Good enough – close enough.”
The difference is a blemish in OUR morality, the paying passengers. Why do we allow this?
Somebody please send a link for this site to this guy!
Yes, please do.
I have always loved Greg Warren. Now I have another reason to love him!
Freaking hilarious !!!
I’m so glad that he did not apologize for anything he said in his act. Any nurse practitioners that were offended are just showing that they know they aren’t equal to doctors. Otherwise, they could laugh at themselves.
I became a nationally registered paramedic in 1994. At that time we were certified not licensed. So I found humor in his poking at registered nurses vs licensed practical nurses.
I’m going to have to look this guy up on the internet because he’s hilarious.
People need to learn to laugh at themselves.