Nurse Practitioners Vs Physicians Assistants

The American Association of Medical Colleges estimates that by 2025 the U.S. will face a physician shortage of over 130,000 physicians. This deficiency is creating an increased demand for Nurse Practitioners and Physicians Assistants. With approximately 205,000 nurse practitioners and 104,000 physicians assistants, they are increasingly becoming the solution to the country’s physician shortage. They are helping to provide cost-effective patient care routinely provided by physicians. Though they are filling essentially the identical positions, there are differences between the two professions.
Nurse practitioners can perform approximately 80 percent of the tasks a primary care physician does, while physicians assistants can perform approximately 80 percent of these tasks. The duties performed by both include performing physical exams, ordering diagnostic tests, diagnosing and treating common
conditions such as high blood pressure, writing prescriptions and educating patients. They can both be utilized in hospitals and clinics, in rural to urban practices.
While they may appear to be similar, there are differences between the two professions.
One major difference is the type of education required. A nurse practitioner must first become a registered nurse. She must earn a bachelor’s degree in nursing, pass the NCLEX-RN exam and then accumulate 500 didactic hours and between 500 to 700 clinical hours. She must also attain a masters or doctorate as a Nurse Practitioner before she can be certified in her area of specialty through the American Nurses Credentialing Center or the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners.
Physicians assistants need a minimum of a master’s degree from an accredited medical school or center of medicine in order to seek certification. Physicians assistants are trained are trained in general medicine and typically need to complete about 1,000 didactic hours and more than 2,000 clinical hours. After these requirements are met, physicians assistant need to pass the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination available through the National Commission on Certification of Physician
Assistants.
The re-certification of nurse practitioners and physicians assistants also varies. Nurse practitioners are required to be re-certified every five years. In order to be re-certified they may retake their respective exam or complete a minimum of 1,000 hours of clinical practice and 75 to 150 continuing education units in their specialty. Physicians assistants require 100 hours of continued medical education every two years and must retake their exam every six years.
While nurse practitioners and physicians assistance perform many of the same functions they are have differences. When deciding which profession to go into you must consider what type of medicine you want to practice and what setting you want to work in. You must consider the educational path to obtaining each certification.