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Website spotlight: Nurses don’t want to be doctors

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, October 14, 2011

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As a child addressing thank you notes for birthday gifts, I was perplexed by the one relative whose address began "Dr. and Mrs. John Doe." I knew he was not a Doctor and yet he was called doctor. My mother explained he was a doctor, but not a "Doctor," and you can imagine the emphasis on the second doctor.

This was my first introduction to the confusing world of honorifics and it hasn't become any simpler since.

We all know that the title "doctor" refers both to physicians with medical degrees and to people who have been awarded a doctorate in a certain subject. These days patients often visit "the doctor" and are seen by a nurse who has an advanced practice degree and whose title includes the right to use the honorific term doctor.

Physician groups have been voicing concerns that the growing numbers of nurses who are also doctors are confusing for patients. Nurses are concerned that advanced practice professionals who have received doctorates in their field are afforded the proper respect and receive the designation that advanced study and knowledge is usually afforded in other fields. The patients are left in the middle. Most patients grasp the differences between a physician and a nurse practitioner (or a physician assistant). Where many patients become confused is when the advanced practice nurse is referred to as doctor. As in, "hello Mr. Green, I'm Dr. Blue."

Nurse practitioners using the title with patients in care settings makes some physicians apoplectic. Their reaction leaves advanced practice nurses fuming. It leaves me perplexed. Why would any nurse want patients to think he or she was a medical doctor? 

Nurses don't want to be doctors. Advanced practice nurses could have chosen medical school if they wanted to become doctors. Instead, they chose to expand their study of nursing through advanced practice programs such as anesthesia, nurse practitioners, or the rapidly expanding doctorate in nursing practice.

Choosing further study in the nursing profession is a commitment to the nursing model, which emphasizes holistic patient care.

To read the rest of this free article, click here.

Editor's note: To read the rest of this free article, visit the Reading Room, part of www.StrategiesForNurseManagers.com.

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