March 21, 2003
A: FROM MENTOR DESIREE BUTTER IN PA
Erin,
The field of medicine is changing very rapidly in our country. Due to
declining pay for physicians and increasing costs, physicians have much less
time to spend with their patients and are starting to utilize physician's
assistants and nurse practitioners more and more. The nurse practitioner's
and physician's assistants typically work side by side with the physician
and are trained and supervised by the physician. However, they do not have
full medication prescribing ability and can not perform all of the
procedures and functions of a physician. There has also been an increase in
the number of practicing nurse practitioners and physicians assistants in
rural areas of the country. In these areas it is often very difficult for a
physician office to stay afloat financially, and there are many areas of the
country with no physician for many miles. I am a family practice physician
and I also teach medical students and residents. Some of our strongest
efforts are going into recruiting medical students into the field of family
practice. Although one of the most challenging and rewarding fields of
medicine, we are seeing our numbers decline due to lower salaries than other
specialties. It is difficult to convince students to be altruistic and go
into fields where there is great need, when they have many thousands of
dollars of debt from college and medical school. We will see what the
future holds.