Equal Quality Using Low Quality?
Once again the propaganda continues. Here is the latest from NBC News:
Midwives, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and other non-doctors do as good a job as MDs in the care they deliver — and patients often like them better, a World Health Organization team reported on Thursday.
I get it. The world needs more health care providers and they need more of them at the primary care level. The problem is that they just don’t want to pay them. So the answer? Continually spread information that there is no need for the education or training that doctors receive.
Let’s look at that WHO article, shall we? This was not a new study but instead a “systematic” review of other studies. Now if NBC News had read the whole piece and looked to the end where the conclusion is they would have seen this:
In conclusion, we found no difference between the effectiveness of care provided by mid-level health workers and that provided by higher level health workers. However, the quality of the evidence was low or very low.
Just think about that. They were basing their conclusion ABOUT quality using LOW or VERY LOW quality. Ironic? Bizarre? You decide. Let’s not forget how difficult it is to truly define the word quality (see my other posts). How does one honestly make a statement knowing that the studies used to come up with that statement were turds?
Education matters. Training matters. NP/PAs are not the same as doctors. Sorry. This does not mean there should not be a role for all of them. This does not mean we can’t collaborate. But to pit them against each other with propaganda like this and make it a competition is just stupid and creates hostility where there should be none.
Simple, Don’t go into primary care. Let the NP’s/PA’s do it. Not a damned thing is going to change in this country until people are coerced into lifestyle changes.
The fact that the primary care providers are going to be made responsible for peoples
shitty habits, makes me regret my vocation choice.
Why don’t we make them sign a piece of paper that they are accepting increased risk and will not sue. Especially the physician who comes in to save the day or not. Not everything cheap is better
So what happens when the delivery becomes complicated and the baby/mom is/are crashing? Do we REALLY want to lower our “quality” of care to that of a second or third world country as this study seems to suggest? Also, in these other countries, is the legal liability the same as it is here in the USA? Are this midlevels prepared to take on this medical-legal responsibility and will they be held to the same standards as the physicians that they are replacing when they supposedly offer the “same” results?