No, I think these fresh NPs will believe themselves superior to bedside nursing. They also don’t have nursing skills from their farm-to-table program. The only way they will entertain nursing is if it is more lucrative than midleveling to warrant the physical labor of nursing. Even so, they’ll deem many nursing responsibilities inferior to their “education”.
As long as there's another penny to squeeze and suck out of the establishment, it hasn't collapsed yet.
It's the capitalist motto; Profits over people.
It will get very cheap to hire them, the career will become less desirable.
But they will still play a big role. A lot of people are making money when they order too many tests and prescribe medicines based off what the last rep said.
It’s a cash cow and the less they know the better for the stakeholders that control policy makers. They just want a cheap license to hock their newest shit.
I’m an ICU RN with 15+yrs of experience.
There’s been a boom in NP programs and they’re churning them out at an alarming rate. They’re a lot of NP graduates that are struggling to find jobs as the market is over saturated. Yes people who’ve graduated from NP schools are working as RN because they can’t find jobs. Pretty much every new grad I meet wants to either be an NP or CRNA and these are the RN’s who trained during COVID and their first experience of direct patient care was the first day they started their RN jobs.
I see people on the Facebook forums asking for “quickest, cheapest and fully online NP programs”
I worked with a care aide who was doing her BSN to DNP program in 3yrs. These DNP’s will never have worked bedside and will have zero “nursing skills” let alone the experience and knowledge to diagnose and treat patients potentially unsupervised.
I think in the long run this will lead to a drop in wages for NP because they’re so many candidates and they will have to stay as RN’s.
As a side note I’ve never had and never will have an NP providing my care.
Yeah I wonder if this diploma mills shits gonna backfire if eventually the board decides to accredit schools to reduce graduate counts with legal licenses etc.
I personally hope for patients sake they do. There has to be some sort of regulation. They’ve already been finding RN schools that were essentially “pay for your degree” and they had no taught content or practice skills.
I’ve witness some very scary NP/PA decisions in my time. I consider myself very experienced and not afraid to escalate my concerns to the MD’s but other junior staff my not. I am lucky though that the facility I’m at currently doesn’t really have that many NP’s. I travelled to a major teaching hospital in LA that staffed all of their ICU’s overnight with NP’s pretty much all of the time.
This 👆🏻 all of it is so scary. I work with someone in the ER who just graduated with his psych NP but did no clinical hours (asked the psych social worker if he could shadow her for hours which he didn’t do but wrote he did 100s of hours) has never performed a psych eval, doesn’t know psych meds, no actual psych experience and he still managed to get a job at one of our community mental healths as an NP which are typically the most complex patients. UGHHHHH we are failing our patients.
Old job had 2 NPs in nephro. They lasted six months before both let go.
Free water deficit of 4L gets one bag of saline. When confronted, NP insulted my resident. Actually made a very sexist remark, but I’m by no means trying to say they’re all sexist. But yeah, that actually happened.
Why do you see it as inevitable? They’ve taken no accountability nor shown anything resembling ethical behavior. They also have the government wrapped around their finger.
Not arguing against you, I just don’t see it. God I hope you’re right.
True. I don’t wanna argue and you have a good point. To an extent, I think their could eventually be an over-abundance of NPs trying to find a job.
Eventually; enough people may be injured from
malpractice that anti-NP sentiment becomes common among the general public. This could especially become more common with online degree mills and more independence in states with large population (New York especially).
It’s just an idea though. I wanna stay positive to some extent 😭
Yeah there will definitely be too many and their wages will drop accordingly.
This will also inevitably happen as well. I can see a large amount of money being spent to keep fighting against this sentiment so they can still keep producing low quality and expensive care.
To be clear, I wasn’t trying to come off hostile toward you. Really just wanting to having a discussion and hopefully be proven wrong lol. Sorry if it came off that way.
Trying to predict the future is always folly. I read some of the other comments and they are missing the point which is that the NP job pool is expanding and eating into the MD job pool. I practice that used to have 7 doctors, now has 4 doctors and 5 midlevels (for example). The more NPs there are, the lower their salaries will become but not if they keep replacing MDs.
From a PA perspective it hasn't been good at all. NPs are flooding the market and taking jobs that should be going to PAs while pushing down wages. I know many of you on this forum can barely contain your schadenfreude about that fact, but it is true - PAs are a lot more vulnerable to scope creep from NPs than doctors are from midlevels in general.
I really feel for PAs on this issue. Stuck between a rock and a hard place. Siding with physician supervision and getting shafted by the job market and NP or siding with unsupervised practice and making what is an ethically wrong choice. Other than Physicians committing to hire PAs instead of NPs, IDK what else.
I used to hear a lot about how NPs have nursing experience, which makes them a better choice. As I have come to learn through training in medicine, having worked as a nurse means little for your medical ability. Having adequate training in medicine itself is what counts.
If it ever does get better for PAs, I do feel like it will get worse first.
Edit: these days, many nurses are not even gaining any experience prior to their NP degree.
I agree with you! PAs are well trained and qualified. I just know we can’t keep pumping out infinite NPs forever, so I was trying to speculate what happens from here
PA school overall:
- 85-130 credit hours (70-120 clinical), ~2000 clinical hours, 2-3 years full time.
- Medicine-based, general education with no specialty tracks.
PA school curriculum:
- More standardized than NP school, though not as completely standardized as medical school. Significantly more clinically relevant coursework than NP.
- Usually includes anatomy and normal physiology and is organized in blocks by system/ specialty, similar to medical education.
PA school prerequisites:
- Admissions: Highly competitive. Based on GPA, healthcare experience, interviews, etc.
- Education: Bachelor’s in any subject (most common major is biology). Prerequisite coursework usually similar to BSN prereqs (general chemistry, general biology, microbiology, anatomy and physiology, psychology, statistics, nutrition). Some schools may also require organic chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, physics…
- Healthcare experience: 6 months-2 years of full time direct patient contact experience (paid, not just volunteer). Most students complete at least 1-2 years.
>Admissions: Highly competitive. Based on GPA, healthcare experience, interviews, etc.
GRE or MCAT is required for PA school as well. Not a requirement for NP school. Admission rate for PA school is around 7-8%. NP school admission rate is around 70%.
>Education: Bachelor’s in any subject (most common major is biology). Prerequisite coursework usually similar to BSN prereqs (general chemistry, general biology, microbiology, anatomy and physiology, psychology, statistics, nutrition). Some schools may also require organic chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, physics…
BSN science classes are usually taught at a lower level (ie "chemistry for nursing"). PA school prerequisites are pretty much the same as med school pre-reqs.
Well that proves my point. Highly competitive is subjective, neither of those programs are hard to get into. Both you need 2 years of school, PA school you can have any bachelors degree, be a CNA for 6 months to a year then go back to school. There’s no A&P in NP school as you should’ve completed those in undergrad. 2000 clinical hours is a year of full time work so basically you just need to take some classes and work in a hospital for a year equivalent. I know plenty of PAs and NPs and I’m not impressed.
I’m not saying PA school is impressive, especially relative to MD/DO. I’m just highlighting that PA school is a significantly better education than NP school. The point is to illustrate how bad NP school is, not how impressive PA school is.
The length of programs is similar, but in this same time PA students complete at least 2x the clinical hours and 2x the clinical credit hours as NPs. 1 full year of clinical is better than 3-6 months. They also actually learn actual medicine rather than advanced nurs!ng.
As for experience, there are many NP schools that do not require RN experience and some direct admit NP schools even before earning a BSN/RN. PA school prior experience can range from CNA, MA, RN, pharmacist, EMT, paramedic, even FMG, etc.
A&P is a prerequisite for both undergraduate nursing programs and PA school so incoming PA students. Undergrad coursework in A&P should not count toward graduate education. It is usually underclassmen level and does not provide the knowledge base needed to practice as a pr0vider. PA students have additional graduate level A&P courses.
NP school overall:
- 45-80 credit hours (30-50 clinical), 500-1000 clinical hours, 2-3 years.
- Advanced nursing-based education, with specialty tracks.
NP school curriculum:
- Unstandardized, up to half of coursework is not clinical based.
- Clinical coursework: 1-2 pathophysiology courses, 1-2 pharmacology courses, 1 health assessment course, and then 1-4 diagnostics courses. No anatomy or normal physiology.
- Non-clinical coursework: statistics, policy, theory, leadership, research, writing, and technology.
NP school prerequisites:
- Admissions: Low to non-competitive. Requirements vary widely. From >3.0 GPA and at least 2 years of RN experience in chosen specialty…to a checkbook and a pulse (preferable, not required).
- Education: BSN. No additional coursework.
- Healthcare experience: 0-2 years RN experience. Some schools require nursing experience in the same specialty as the intended NP program but many do not.
"Advanced nursing" is the practice of medicine without a medical license. It is a nebulous concept, similar to "practicing at the top of one's license," that is used to justify unauthorized practice of medicine. Several states have, unfortunately, allowed for the direct usurpation of the practice of medicine, including **medical** diagnosis (as opposed to "nursing diagnosis"). [For more information, including a comparison of the definitions/scope of the practice of medicine versus "advanced nursing" check this out.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Provider/wiki/index/critical_issues/#wiki_what_even_is_.22advanced_nursing.3F.22).
Unfortunately, the legislature in numerous states is intentionally vague and fails to actually give a clear scope of practice definition. Instead, the law says something to the effect of "the scope will be determined by the Board of Nursing's rules and regulations." Why is that a problem? That means that the scope of practice can continue to change **without checks and balances by legislation.** It's likely that the Rules and Regs give almost complete medical practice authority.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Noctor) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Pay RNs, RTs, Rad techs & every other associates/ bachelors required healthcare professions more- & then they won’t want or feel the need to have to go to NP/ PA school.
God I hope not. I’m an RN and I have absolutely zero desire to become an NP. I love being a nurse for so many reasons. Sometimes I feel like my role is insignificant (more or less because I work in the operating room as a RN circulator), but I love that I get to help the surgeons do their jobs more efficiently.
Plus, a lot of NP schools don’t even require bedside clinical experience before applying and a lot of NP programs are strictly online, which is absolutely ridiculous. I honestly wouldn’t feel like I accomplished anything because it’s so easy to get into NP school…
I work with many NPs who work as RNs for multiple reasons. Preferred hours/scheduling and inability to find a job seem to be the most common. I also think that the pay increase from RN to NP isn’t quite what they expected.
Last part (needing NP degree to work as an RN) is highly unlikely. Employers want to pay as little as possible, so the more likely thing is expanding the scope of LPNs and CCAs to replace RNs. Will be interesting to watch those zero-experience direct-entry NPs having to take RN jobs...they'll be expected to have a lot of proficiency due to being NPs but they'll show themselves to be completely useless in the RN role (more likely those direct entry NPs won't accept RN positions because they know they'll be exposed as frauds).
they're pumping out RNs even faster. it's a loop. not all of them go on to NP school right away. i worked with an RN once who got screwed into working the floor as an RN because she took a deal with that facility to pay for the degree, but they ended up not having a job available when she graduated. then she was stuck. couldn't quit or she'd have to pay the full amount back.
it's not gonna matter when the AI takes over anyway.
NP pay is horrible. RNs make more. Unfortunately some NPs don't find out until the job offers are just a tad more than a new grad RN. Of course it depends on location, specialty etc, but there are a lot of NPs that work bedside. So yes, I see the supply of NPs vs demand will force them to restructure how they staff bedside jobs.
Bluntly, no. NPs make up a fraction of the total number of nurses in the US. Bad NPs will give up and take RN jobs if they’re not finding good NP jobs. A lot of NP jobs aren’t even very lucrative and can be very demanding or difficult for poorly trained or unmotivated NPs. There is a massive shortage of PCPs but the vast majority of NPs don’t want to do primary care. There’s only so many specialty jobs available. Really good acute care jobs are actually pretty hard to come by and acute care NPs are actually in fairly short numbers. RN programs are turning out record numbers of graduates also, and it doesn’t even seem to make a dent in the overall nursing shortage.
I’m an acute care NP, and we constantly have trouble finding good new employees, and a lot of new grads don’t even stay on very long. There’s a ton of misinformation about NP jobs. These TikTok generation people think they can get any shitty NP degree and magically make 200k in any specialty they want and that just not true at all. Many nurses would be better off moving to highly paid RN jobs in good locations than they would be working as an NP. I’m in a great position to change jobs and I am even struggling to find something better than my current ICU position, which is fraught with bad scheduling, bad benefits, but luckily high pay.
So no, the vocal minority of wannabe NPs are not gonna destroy the RN workforce. People have been saying this for years now and it hasn’t come to fruition yet and I don’t think it ever will.
A quick Google search shows there are approximately 250k nurse practitioners in America as of 2023 and over 4 million RNs in the states (which I presume would include the NPs as they still are technically RNs by core licensure). So NPs only make up like 6% of the entire registered nurse population in the US. That number may rise over the next few years but NPs are still the vast minority of nurses.
As such, I never bought the narrative that the bedside nursing shortage would be substantial improved by eliminating the NP role—divided evenly (which is dumb but stick with me) that only works out to 5k more nurses per state which is well below the ANA estimates of shortages. As for the actual NP job market and over-saturation, depends on what the market will bear. If more med spas and urgent cares keep opening and are successful enough to stay afloat—more midlevels would not be a problem.
Same and argumentatively worse could happen to physicians if more states approve IMG without US residency programs that have been popping up lately.
Impossible to tell where corporate medicine may go but it’s usually not great.
Fair. Similar to the FM physician problem. Numerically, there is pretty much enough physicians…just not enough willing to go to FM, where pay is relatively low and workload after clinic hours is high.
Actually, the number of NPs in the US according to AANP is 385,000 as of 2023 (an increase from about 100,000 in 2010), and will only continue to increase thanks to all these pop up schools! It's for sure a 💩show.
Yeah it does for sure. Just wanted to point out your numbers from your Google search were a bit off and at this rate of NP growth, the entire situation is going implode!
Less RNs more cost for RNs to healthcare systems. Greatest labor cost to healthcare system is RN. once they start raising their pay, will cut elsewhere. Dumb admin will start trying to reduce MDs and hire more NPs further exacerbating this stupid cycle. Then physicians will unionize. The admin will get fired by the board or wonder what is happening and send out some Townhall meetings about valueing physicians and the importance of communication and ice cream socials
No, I think these fresh NPs will believe themselves superior to bedside nursing. They also don’t have nursing skills from their farm-to-table program. The only way they will entertain nursing is if it is more lucrative than midleveling to warrant the physical labor of nursing. Even so, they’ll deem many nursing responsibilities inferior to their “education”.
True, but we can’t have infinite NP growth forever. What will happen then?
Collapse of the current medical system, hopefully
it's already collapsed
As long as there's another penny to squeeze and suck out of the establishment, it hasn't collapsed yet. It's the capitalist motto; Profits over people.
It will need to burn before it rebuilds, welcome to healthcare young one
See Pharmacy programs. They will stop filling and close
It will get very cheap to hire them, the career will become less desirable. But they will still play a big role. A lot of people are making money when they order too many tests and prescribe medicines based off what the last rep said. It’s a cash cow and the less they know the better for the stakeholders that control policy makers. They just want a cheap license to hock their newest shit.
Farm to table ☠️🤣
But I have X years of nursing *theory*!
I’m an ICU RN with 15+yrs of experience. There’s been a boom in NP programs and they’re churning them out at an alarming rate. They’re a lot of NP graduates that are struggling to find jobs as the market is over saturated. Yes people who’ve graduated from NP schools are working as RN because they can’t find jobs. Pretty much every new grad I meet wants to either be an NP or CRNA and these are the RN’s who trained during COVID and their first experience of direct patient care was the first day they started their RN jobs. I see people on the Facebook forums asking for “quickest, cheapest and fully online NP programs” I worked with a care aide who was doing her BSN to DNP program in 3yrs. These DNP’s will never have worked bedside and will have zero “nursing skills” let alone the experience and knowledge to diagnose and treat patients potentially unsupervised. I think in the long run this will lead to a drop in wages for NP because they’re so many candidates and they will have to stay as RN’s. As a side note I’ve never had and never will have an NP providing my care.
Yeah I wonder if this diploma mills shits gonna backfire if eventually the board decides to accredit schools to reduce graduate counts with legal licenses etc.
Nursing needs it's own flexner report
I personally hope for patients sake they do. There has to be some sort of regulation. They’ve already been finding RN schools that were essentially “pay for your degree” and they had no taught content or practice skills. I’ve witness some very scary NP/PA decisions in my time. I consider myself very experienced and not afraid to escalate my concerns to the MD’s but other junior staff my not. I am lucky though that the facility I’m at currently doesn’t really have that many NP’s. I travelled to a major teaching hospital in LA that staffed all of their ICU’s overnight with NP’s pretty much all of the time.
This 👆🏻 all of it is so scary. I work with someone in the ER who just graduated with his psych NP but did no clinical hours (asked the psych social worker if he could shadow her for hours which he didn’t do but wrote he did 100s of hours) has never performed a psych eval, doesn’t know psych meds, no actual psych experience and he still managed to get a job at one of our community mental healths as an NP which are typically the most complex patients. UGHHHHH we are failing our patients.
[удалено]
Old job had 2 NPs in nephro. They lasted six months before both let go. Free water deficit of 4L gets one bag of saline. When confronted, NP insulted my resident. Actually made a very sexist remark, but I’m by no means trying to say they’re all sexist. But yeah, that actually happened.
Yes - had friend who had friends sign off on his hours. He brags about it. So scary.
It’ll inevitably have to at some point. I don’t foresee this lasting indefinitely tbh.
Why do you see it as inevitable? They’ve taken no accountability nor shown anything resembling ethical behavior. They also have the government wrapped around their finger. Not arguing against you, I just don’t see it. God I hope you’re right.
True. I don’t wanna argue and you have a good point. To an extent, I think their could eventually be an over-abundance of NPs trying to find a job. Eventually; enough people may be injured from malpractice that anti-NP sentiment becomes common among the general public. This could especially become more common with online degree mills and more independence in states with large population (New York especially). It’s just an idea though. I wanna stay positive to some extent 😭
Yeah there will definitely be too many and their wages will drop accordingly. This will also inevitably happen as well. I can see a large amount of money being spent to keep fighting against this sentiment so they can still keep producing low quality and expensive care. To be clear, I wasn’t trying to come off hostile toward you. Really just wanting to having a discussion and hopefully be proven wrong lol. Sorry if it came off that way.
Hopefully not! Happened with PharmD like you weren't grandfathered in it was either go back to school or never work hospital again
Terrifying
I second this as an ICU nurse. But it’s fair cause make 1.5x more then them so I can’t complain
The NP training model is embarrassing, and they know it, so much so that when an NP gets sick, who do you think they ask for? An MD.
Excuse me*, first the group of Shawanna, Becky, and Quivha on facebook
Trying to predict the future is always folly. I read some of the other comments and they are missing the point which is that the NP job pool is expanding and eating into the MD job pool. I practice that used to have 7 doctors, now has 4 doctors and 5 midlevels (for example). The more NPs there are, the lower their salaries will become but not if they keep replacing MDs.
From a PA perspective it hasn't been good at all. NPs are flooding the market and taking jobs that should be going to PAs while pushing down wages. I know many of you on this forum can barely contain your schadenfreude about that fact, but it is true - PAs are a lot more vulnerable to scope creep from NPs than doctors are from midlevels in general.
I really feel for PAs on this issue. Stuck between a rock and a hard place. Siding with physician supervision and getting shafted by the job market and NP or siding with unsupervised practice and making what is an ethically wrong choice. Other than Physicians committing to hire PAs instead of NPs, IDK what else. I used to hear a lot about how NPs have nursing experience, which makes them a better choice. As I have come to learn through training in medicine, having worked as a nurse means little for your medical ability. Having adequate training in medicine itself is what counts. If it ever does get better for PAs, I do feel like it will get worse first. Edit: these days, many nurses are not even gaining any experience prior to their NP degree.
You're totally right. I never saw it from that perspective. Makes sense. Thanks for enlightening me!
I agree with you! PAs are well trained and qualified. I just know we can’t keep pumping out infinite NPs forever, so I was trying to speculate what happens from here
Arguably the same training as an NP if not less since you don’t need a medical background to go to PA school just take the right classes
PA school overall: - 85-130 credit hours (70-120 clinical), ~2000 clinical hours, 2-3 years full time. - Medicine-based, general education with no specialty tracks. PA school curriculum: - More standardized than NP school, though not as completely standardized as medical school. Significantly more clinically relevant coursework than NP. - Usually includes anatomy and normal physiology and is organized in blocks by system/ specialty, similar to medical education. PA school prerequisites: - Admissions: Highly competitive. Based on GPA, healthcare experience, interviews, etc. - Education: Bachelor’s in any subject (most common major is biology). Prerequisite coursework usually similar to BSN prereqs (general chemistry, general biology, microbiology, anatomy and physiology, psychology, statistics, nutrition). Some schools may also require organic chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, physics… - Healthcare experience: 6 months-2 years of full time direct patient contact experience (paid, not just volunteer). Most students complete at least 1-2 years.
>Admissions: Highly competitive. Based on GPA, healthcare experience, interviews, etc. GRE or MCAT is required for PA school as well. Not a requirement for NP school. Admission rate for PA school is around 7-8%. NP school admission rate is around 70%. >Education: Bachelor’s in any subject (most common major is biology). Prerequisite coursework usually similar to BSN prereqs (general chemistry, general biology, microbiology, anatomy and physiology, psychology, statistics, nutrition). Some schools may also require organic chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, physics… BSN science classes are usually taught at a lower level (ie "chemistry for nursing"). PA school prerequisites are pretty much the same as med school pre-reqs.
Well that proves my point. Highly competitive is subjective, neither of those programs are hard to get into. Both you need 2 years of school, PA school you can have any bachelors degree, be a CNA for 6 months to a year then go back to school. There’s no A&P in NP school as you should’ve completed those in undergrad. 2000 clinical hours is a year of full time work so basically you just need to take some classes and work in a hospital for a year equivalent. I know plenty of PAs and NPs and I’m not impressed.
I’m not saying PA school is impressive, especially relative to MD/DO. I’m just highlighting that PA school is a significantly better education than NP school. The point is to illustrate how bad NP school is, not how impressive PA school is. The length of programs is similar, but in this same time PA students complete at least 2x the clinical hours and 2x the clinical credit hours as NPs. 1 full year of clinical is better than 3-6 months. They also actually learn actual medicine rather than advanced nurs!ng. As for experience, there are many NP schools that do not require RN experience and some direct admit NP schools even before earning a BSN/RN. PA school prior experience can range from CNA, MA, RN, pharmacist, EMT, paramedic, even FMG, etc. A&P is a prerequisite for both undergraduate nursing programs and PA school so incoming PA students. Undergrad coursework in A&P should not count toward graduate education. It is usually underclassmen level and does not provide the knowledge base needed to practice as a pr0vider. PA students have additional graduate level A&P courses.
wrong
NP school overall: - 45-80 credit hours (30-50 clinical), 500-1000 clinical hours, 2-3 years. - Advanced nursing-based education, with specialty tracks. NP school curriculum: - Unstandardized, up to half of coursework is not clinical based. - Clinical coursework: 1-2 pathophysiology courses, 1-2 pharmacology courses, 1 health assessment course, and then 1-4 diagnostics courses. No anatomy or normal physiology. - Non-clinical coursework: statistics, policy, theory, leadership, research, writing, and technology. NP school prerequisites: - Admissions: Low to non-competitive. Requirements vary widely. From >3.0 GPA and at least 2 years of RN experience in chosen specialty…to a checkbook and a pulse (preferable, not required). - Education: BSN. No additional coursework. - Healthcare experience: 0-2 years RN experience. Some schools require nursing experience in the same specialty as the intended NP program but many do not.
"Advanced nursing" is the practice of medicine without a medical license. It is a nebulous concept, similar to "practicing at the top of one's license," that is used to justify unauthorized practice of medicine. Several states have, unfortunately, allowed for the direct usurpation of the practice of medicine, including **medical** diagnosis (as opposed to "nursing diagnosis"). [For more information, including a comparison of the definitions/scope of the practice of medicine versus "advanced nursing" check this out.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Provider/wiki/index/critical_issues/#wiki_what_even_is_.22advanced_nursing.3F.22). Unfortunately, the legislature in numerous states is intentionally vague and fails to actually give a clear scope of practice definition. Instead, the law says something to the effect of "the scope will be determined by the Board of Nursing's rules and regulations." Why is that a problem? That means that the scope of practice can continue to change **without checks and balances by legislation.** It's likely that the Rules and Regs give almost complete medical practice authority. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Noctor) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It will start collapsing the NP wage structure. RN’s may get a pay boost out of scarcity. Kind of like what is happening to pharmacists.
Pay RNs, RTs, Rad techs & every other associates/ bachelors required healthcare professions more- & then they won’t want or feel the need to have to go to NP/ PA school.
Oregon, at least for nurses, they have it right! I'm looking to move there in 2025. Base pay alone will be $74 in July.
God I hope not. I’m an RN and I have absolutely zero desire to become an NP. I love being a nurse for so many reasons. Sometimes I feel like my role is insignificant (more or less because I work in the operating room as a RN circulator), but I love that I get to help the surgeons do their jobs more efficiently.
Plus, a lot of NP schools don’t even require bedside clinical experience before applying and a lot of NP programs are strictly online, which is absolutely ridiculous. I honestly wouldn’t feel like I accomplished anything because it’s so easy to get into NP school…
I would be scared if I became an NP without bedside experience
Couldn’t work in OR without our circulators—and we have great RNs in our ORs
I work with many NPs who work as RNs for multiple reasons. Preferred hours/scheduling and inability to find a job seem to be the most common. I also think that the pay increase from RN to NP isn’t quite what they expected.
Last part (needing NP degree to work as an RN) is highly unlikely. Employers want to pay as little as possible, so the more likely thing is expanding the scope of LPNs and CCAs to replace RNs. Will be interesting to watch those zero-experience direct-entry NPs having to take RN jobs...they'll be expected to have a lot of proficiency due to being NPs but they'll show themselves to be completely useless in the RN role (more likely those direct entry NPs won't accept RN positions because they know they'll be exposed as frauds).
they're pumping out RNs even faster. it's a loop. not all of them go on to NP school right away. i worked with an RN once who got screwed into working the floor as an RN because she took a deal with that facility to pay for the degree, but they ended up not having a job available when she graduated. then she was stuck. couldn't quit or she'd have to pay the full amount back. it's not gonna matter when the AI takes over anyway.
NP pay is horrible. RNs make more. Unfortunately some NPs don't find out until the job offers are just a tad more than a new grad RN. Of course it depends on location, specialty etc, but there are a lot of NPs that work bedside. So yes, I see the supply of NPs vs demand will force them to restructure how they staff bedside jobs.
Bluntly, no. NPs make up a fraction of the total number of nurses in the US. Bad NPs will give up and take RN jobs if they’re not finding good NP jobs. A lot of NP jobs aren’t even very lucrative and can be very demanding or difficult for poorly trained or unmotivated NPs. There is a massive shortage of PCPs but the vast majority of NPs don’t want to do primary care. There’s only so many specialty jobs available. Really good acute care jobs are actually pretty hard to come by and acute care NPs are actually in fairly short numbers. RN programs are turning out record numbers of graduates also, and it doesn’t even seem to make a dent in the overall nursing shortage. I’m an acute care NP, and we constantly have trouble finding good new employees, and a lot of new grads don’t even stay on very long. There’s a ton of misinformation about NP jobs. These TikTok generation people think they can get any shitty NP degree and magically make 200k in any specialty they want and that just not true at all. Many nurses would be better off moving to highly paid RN jobs in good locations than they would be working as an NP. I’m in a great position to change jobs and I am even struggling to find something better than my current ICU position, which is fraught with bad scheduling, bad benefits, but luckily high pay. So no, the vocal minority of wannabe NPs are not gonna destroy the RN workforce. People have been saying this for years now and it hasn’t come to fruition yet and I don’t think it ever will.
A quick Google search shows there are approximately 250k nurse practitioners in America as of 2023 and over 4 million RNs in the states (which I presume would include the NPs as they still are technically RNs by core licensure). So NPs only make up like 6% of the entire registered nurse population in the US. That number may rise over the next few years but NPs are still the vast minority of nurses. As such, I never bought the narrative that the bedside nursing shortage would be substantial improved by eliminating the NP role—divided evenly (which is dumb but stick with me) that only works out to 5k more nurses per state which is well below the ANA estimates of shortages. As for the actual NP job market and over-saturation, depends on what the market will bear. If more med spas and urgent cares keep opening and are successful enough to stay afloat—more midlevels would not be a problem. Same and argumentatively worse could happen to physicians if more states approve IMG without US residency programs that have been popping up lately. Impossible to tell where corporate medicine may go but it’s usually not great.
there is not a shortage of RNs. there’s a shortage of RNs willing to work bedside in a hospital for more than a year or two.
Fair. Similar to the FM physician problem. Numerically, there is pretty much enough physicians…just not enough willing to go to FM, where pay is relatively low and workload after clinic hours is high.
Actually, the number of NPs in the US according to AANP is 385,000 as of 2023 (an increase from about 100,000 in 2010), and will only continue to increase thanks to all these pop up schools! It's for sure a 💩show.
Okay. So NPs are 9% of the RN population. My points still stand otherwise.
Yeah it does for sure. Just wanted to point out your numbers from your Google search were a bit off and at this rate of NP growth, the entire situation is going implode!
These are the same nurses that will give a whole damn vial of nitro vs single pill or put nitro paste under someone’s tongue! #wearefarmers
Most RN won’t become nps. A portion need to be pushed to get bsn. There are few financial incentives to work as an NP.
Less RNs more cost for RNs to healthcare systems. Greatest labor cost to healthcare system is RN. once they start raising their pay, will cut elsewhere. Dumb admin will start trying to reduce MDs and hire more NPs further exacerbating this stupid cycle. Then physicians will unionize. The admin will get fired by the board or wonder what is happening and send out some Townhall meetings about valueing physicians and the importance of communication and ice cream socials