NP STANDS FOR "NO PLEASE"

My wife recently took my 18 month old to a pediatric neurologist that was recommended by our pediatrician. I like our pediatrician. She’s very direct and “old school” and is highly competent. So I trust a recommendation from her.

She may be right, and this pediatric neurologist may be great. However, I would never know because my wife told me that she NEVER EVEN GOT TO SEE HIM!!! No, she saw the Nurse Practitioner (cue scary music). And then when my wife protested, the staff told her “Oh, don’t worry. The doctor will come in to see your child afterward”.

Well, that turned out to be a gigantic load of bird-plop! He wasn’t EVEN IN THE OFFICE!!!

I called the doctor himself to protest this shoddy treatment. He reassured me that his NP was his “partner” for six years, that the NP had published more papers than the doctor had, that the NP’s capabilities were superb.

I told him that, while all of this may be true, there was one indisputable fact: I know what kind of training (for the most part) a pediatric neurologist has received. I have NO FREAKING IDEA what kind of training a pediatric neurology NP has received. And what’s more, I really don’t care! I don’t care if the NP has written 100 papers, published in every major journal in the nation (well, actually that would be pretty cool).

Also, I object to his use of the word “partner”, as if his credentials were somehow equivalent with the NP’s. What is he thinking?

Look, I understand why NP’s exist. It’s an economic reality of office based practice. It increases the number of patients that can be seen. However, when it comes to a very specialized group of patients, especially nervous parents who obsess about their little one, for whom they’ve lost so much sleep (SO MUCH) in the last 18 months, I think an NP is not good enough. And shame on his staff for lying about his availability. (He states he was stuck at another hospital, which I understand. But the staff completely misled my wife).

I will never employ an NP to see my patients for me. End of story. Ditto for PA’s. They can draw blood, they can do post visit counseling, they can hold a patient’s hand.

But they aren’t doctors.