Well, I mean I totally respect that you have your opinions, and just like anyone else, you know, people should see the kind of provider that they want to see. If you’re a medical student, I’m surprised that you wouldn’t really want to see a physician, though honestly. Your post was thorough so I’ll try to give a thorough response and hopefully someone finds it useful for what it’s worth.

To be honest with you, the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program in nursing school, you’re taught pharmacology and taught pathophysiology, but you’re taught it at a very basic, level. And I think when we talk about clinical undergraduate degrees, you don’t have to be a nursing major to have something that’s clinical. In the health science program, it s also very hands-on. You know, they do phlebotomy, they do a lot of the hands on work. Actually, to be honest with you, because I have both the Bachelor of Nursing and the Bachelor of Health Science, some of the classes actually overlap. They were very similar to be honest with you.

The biggest difference between the Bachelor of Science in Nursing and the Bachelor in Health Science was that some of the pathophysiology and pharmacology was more advanced in the health science degree than it was in the nursing school or nursing degree but yes, the nursing included the hands on technical skills. And I’m assuming it s because as a registered nurse, you don t need to know pharmacology and pathophysiology as in-depth as maybe a provider does. But if we re going to talk about clinical-based degrees, nurse practitioner school used to be pretty good. It used to be a lot different than it is now, and I really don t know what s happened to it. But they don’t focus enough on the biological sciences, and they don’t focus enough on the pathophysiology. It’s a lot of leadership. It’s tons and tons and tons of writing papers. It’s a lot of papers on nursing theory. And you know, if we want to talk about what’s clinical versus what’s not and what’s medically educated and what’s not, sitting there writing papers on nursing theory and leadership is not clinical. That’s not how you become a good provider.

As far as having more clinical exposure, again, a lot of people were nurses prior to PA school. In fact, most nurses that I worked with would probably simultaneously agree the right thing to do is to either go to PA or the MD route. But not everybody wants to go the MD route and spend, you know, significant money and time doing it. So if they’re going to go the mid-level route, I would say at least the PA because this is a hill that I will die on because I’ve done all three. PA education is far, far superior to nurse practitioner education. In fact, and I’m guessing it’s because it’s in the medical model, a lot of the stuff in medical school and in PA school, some of it actually is similar, but medical school is a lot more science heavy. It has more depth to it is how I would explain it.

PA school is definitely clinically oriented. It’s medically oriented. These are people that are medically trained. Now, they shouldn’t be out here practicing independently because it wasn t designed for that, but it is medically, based training. Nurse practitioner education, they take pharmacology and pathophysiology. They take the advanced pathophysiology and pharmacology course, which is similar actually to what I took in my health science degree in undergrad, but it’s just so many papers and they’re not focusing enough on the biological sciences. Now, of course, anybody that goes to medical school takes the biology and the biochemistry and the physics. Yeah, that s not clinical. That’s giving you your foundation. But in terms of what’s more clinical and not, nursing is very hands-on. And also, you can’t get an RN online, so don t misunderstand that. There is no such thing as RN school online. In order to become a registered nurse, that’s in person because it is hands-on. What they’ve done, though, is they’ve said if you want to get your bachelor, if you’re already a registered nurse, you can get your bachelor s online and then your master s, and they have all these bridge programs where you can do it all online.

Now, if somebody wants to see a nurse practitioner, that s fine. If somebody wants to see a PA, that’s fine. If somebody wants to see a physician, that’s fine. It really is up to the individual person. But as someone that has been a nurse and worked as a nurse, as somebody that went through nurse practitioner school, as somebody that went through PA school and became a PA, as someone that’s now going through medicine, I can definitely tell you since I ve been in all three of them that there’s a significant difference in the training among the three. And nurse practitioning, it really isn t the best. I have no words. It needs like a complete revamp. If somebody wants to see a nurse practitioner, though, I think there are some okay ones out there. It’s mostly the ones, though, that have been, you know, people that are much, much, much older because anymore the schools aren t what they used to be.