This study documents features of clinical departments in teaching hospitals that are using physician assistants (PAs) and nurse practitioners (NPs) to perform some tasks previously done by medical or surgical residents. More than 60 percent of teaching hospital medical directors surveyed reported experience with substitution in their hospitals. The experience overall appears to be positive; one-third of the departments are planning to increase the number of PAs and NPs they use. The results imply that some of the services lost in house-staff reductions called for in many physician workforce reform proposals could be provided by alternative health professionals.
This study identified core components of the curriculum for master's-level community health nurses (CHNs) and assessed whether leaders in service agreed with leaders in education on the importance of these components. Through a mailed survey, 588 leaders in CHN service and education identified the following as the most important to include in the core CHN curriculum: a practicum experience; epidemiology; community health assessment and diagnosis; administration and management, including public health administration, management theory, program planning and evaluation, financial management and budgeting, and quality assurance; research methods and biostatistics; health promotion and disease prevention; intervention at the aggregate level; and leadership theory. These leaders also indicated that skills in both administration and direct care are essential for CHN practice. While there was remarkable agreement between service and education leaders in many areas, notable disagreements were seen in the importance accorded administrative skills. Service leaders rated these skills much more highly than did leaders in education.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.