Tuesday, 22 April 2008

Fraudulent use of the Nurse Practitioner title

Healthcare Republic raises an interesting point.
The problem being, there is currently no protection of the Nurse Practitioner title. This is something NPs have struggled to remedy, there is alas, little support from the DoH.
This leaves those of us who are qualified NPs, and prescribers, with little recourse when faced with this kind of criticism . My personal view is that there is no attempt to defraud patients, but until the title is protected by statute. We will still be seen as quacks by those of our medical colleagues with little insight as to the positive benefits we bring to patient care.

6 comments:

TotallyUn-Pc said...

is that like teaching assistants? or PCSO's?

Fat Lazy Male Nurse said...

Yep, pretty much. Although to be fair these 'pretenders' are trained nurses. They just lack the three year (minimum) training that should be required to register as a nurse practitioner. The DH did initially agree what a nurse practitioner is, but this has been reviewed since Shipman and still they dither. This means there is currently no protection for the Nurse Practitioner. Analagous I suppose to a Sergeant wearing a Chief Inspectors uniform, drawing his pay, supervising others he is not truly competent to supervise and the public believing him to be a chief inspector.

Anonymous said...

Hello! Just to let you know I've tagged you on my blog.

Enjoy reading yours, where have you been?

Fat Lazy Male Nurse said...

Thanks for the tag. Once I've worked out how to do it I'll set up a list of links.
Not been around much due to pressure of work. New job coming up soon, so I'll have a bit more time to post.

Unknown said...

I'm not sure how it works over there but here nurses are not allowed, according the Board of Nursing, to use a title that they did not take a test for and pass. One also has to have gone to an accredited school for the appropriate length of time. I would be really angry to find someone calling themselves Nurse Practitioner if they didn't have the same qualifications as myself.

Anonymous said...

While I agree that the title Nurse Practicioner should be protected, the only problem I have with it is that its a bit wishy washy.

I'm a practicing registered nurse, I know other people who are nurses working in GPs practices called Practice Nurses and yet more nurses with the title Lead Practitioner ( who tend to get upset when I ask them exactly what is it do you practice with lead - turning it into gold? )

All these job titles and qualifications confuse me and I'm a nurse. What hope does the public have? You need a new protected title- maybe you lot should call yourselves Uber Nurses.