Patients At Risk – Audio

Emergency physician Andrew Wilson, MD, discusses a case in which a routine work physical at an Urgent Care resulted in an unnecessary ER visit for a patient.

Last week was Match week, and while thousands will celebrate matching into residency, 2,500 medical school grads will face an uncertain future due to a shortage of residency positions.

Nurse practitioner and physician assistant use are often justified because of a shortage of physicians, especially in underserved areas.

The COVID19 pandemic created both challenges and opportunities in the healthcare sector. One major winner: telehealth startup companies offering ‘virtual’ medical care, including psychiatric care.

Nurse practitioner and physician assistant advocates often assure physicians that they face little liability or risk when performing supervision, insisting that NPs and PAs are liable for their own errors.

Imagine this scenario: You are rolled into an operating room in a surgical center for an outpatient elective procedure. But when you wake up; you’re in an emergency department, and you learn that you nearly died from anesthesia complications.

Physicians train for at least 15,000 hours before we are permitted to practice independently, and one of the reasons is that it takes a long time and a lot of patient volume to be exposed to the many different presentations of disease processes to learn how to recognize true emergencies that need immediate interventions. 

Today we are going to explore the phenomenon of NPs and PAs performing colonoscopies

Increasingly, nurse practitioners and physician assistants are being asked to step into the role of physicians.

Tired of being owned by corporations, but don't want to open your own practice?