The nursing profession's coming of age: Not as successful as it looks

doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7532.51-e

BMJ 2006;332:51 (7 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7532.51-e

Letter

The nursing profession's coming of age

Not as successful as it looks

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Editor—Young says that some practices are even nurse led—itis the nurses who employ the general practitioners, and patientsare formally registered with the practice, not the doctor.¹What she neglects to point out is that one of these flagshipnurse led practices has had to be taken over by the primarycare trust, the nurses' contract being terminated. This wasapparently because of the numerous patients' complaints aboutthe service with which they were being provided.

The fundamental difference between doctors and nurses is thatdoctors have a holistic view of all patho-physiology and atleast a decade of training in diagnosis and diagnostic uncertainty.Nurse practitioners do not have the depth and breadth of trainingto manage all aspects of patients' care on their own. Pretendingthat nurses can be doctors is not helpful. Instead of spending12 years learning to be a specialist in one area, perhaps . . . [Full text of this article]

Trefor J Roscoe, general practitioner

Sothall Medical Centre, Sheffield S20 5JX Trefor@nhs.net