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American Medicine

With health care reform under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), doctors will become more overworked. To get better health care, you may have to see nurse practitioners. I agree with a recent editorial in the New York Times http://nyti.ms/VOJsWe which says that trained nurse practitioners may be able to replace physicians as the point of contact for prescribing care in many circumstances.

But these professionals do not have the depth of training and experience of physicians. So their care must always be supervised by physicians, and the nurse practitioners must be able to be in immediate contact with a supervising physician. You can trust a well-trained nurse practitioner if you know that your doctor is looking over their shoulder.

For a more complete discussion about nurse practitioners, see Chapter 6 Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants in my new book Surviving American Medicine.