There are over 400 nurse practitioner schools in the United States, with nearly HALF of these programs promoting online training—ranging from 50-100% of required academic training sessions.

Some of these programs offer accelerated training, allowing students to become an NP in as little as 2 years, others offer flexible schedules with part-time programs allowing students to work full-time while they attend school.

In contrast, there are just 179 medical schools producing physicians in the United States. None of them are online, and there are no part-time medical schools.

Why has there been such a proliferation of nursing schools, and with such a huge number and variability of program types, who are ensuring that these programs are producing qualified medical clinicians?

To help us explore these issues, we are joined by Rayne Thoman, a registered nurse who left nurse practitioner school when she discovered serious problems in the educational standards.