• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

33 Charts

  • About
    • What is 33 Charts?
    • Bryan Vartabedian MD
  • Blog
  • 33mail
  • Foci
    • Social/Public Media
    • Physicians
    • Patients
    • Hospitals
    • Information
    • Process/Flow
    • Technology
    • Digital culture
    • Future Medicine
  • The Public Physician
Physicians, Social/Public Media

Against Advanced Practitioners – Medicine’s Social Pushback

February 22, 2019 By Bryan Vartabedian · Reading Time: 2 minutes

Recently I’ve been getting salty Twitter remarks about my ‘sympathetic views’ toward non-MD health care providers. These comments against advanced practitioners come from physicians working to take back the night and restore medicine to its rightful hierarchy.

One confronted me with the absurd question: Are you willing to turn all of your family’s care over to nurse practitioners?

Beyond the recognition of advanced practitioners as professionals is the demonization of the word provider. Referring to the collective body of professionals that deliver care, the term provider is used to describe the players in the modern clinical care space: physicians and advanced practitioners.

Some don’t like the term because it acknowledges that there are others beside physicians who provide. To be clear, I’m not fond of the term. But that has nothing to do with professional boundaries, fear, or advanced practitioners.

Here’s a reality that I live with every day: Some of what I used to do as a physician can now be done by machines. And some elements of my work are done as well by other kinds of health professionals. This is the result of a complex interplay of social and technological forces.

It’s not because we’ve failed to stand up to the establishment.

The fuss came from this post about why providers may be a fitting name for some physicians. It lays down the some truth about our future: If we’re not part of our own redefinition as doctors, others will redefine us. It’s a call to action that many want to ignore.

We can recognize and evolve with the change around us or we can work desperately to turn back the hands of time.

If you like this post you might dig into other posts about Physician identity or Advanced practitioners. These are the 33 charts Archives – collections of writing curated around the tags you find at the very bottom of every post. They are carefully chosen – check ’em out to find stuff you might be interested in.

Modified image originally from the National Library of Medicine

Related Articles

  • Social Feed Misperception
  • What Counts in Medicine
  • Psychomanipulation and Social Health

Tagged With: Advanced practitioners, Physician Identity

Related Articles

  • Social Feed Misperception
  • What Counts in Medicine
  • Psychomanipulation and Social Health

Primary Sidebar

Bryan Vartabedian, MD

Bryan Vartabedian, MD
Bryan Vartabedian is the Chief Pediatrics Officer at Texas Children’s Hospital North Austin and one of health care’s influential
voices on technology & medicine.
Learn More

Popular Articles

  • The Fate of Fired Cleveland Clinic Resident Lara Kollab
  • Cures Act Final Rule – How It Will Change Medicine
  • 12 Things About Doximity You Probably Didn’t Know
  • Should Physicians Give Their Cell Phone Number to Patients?
  • Doximity Dialer Video – Telemedicine’s Latest Power Player

Sign up for 33mail newsletter

Featured Articles

Will the Future Need Doctors?

The Case for New Physician Literacies in the Digital Age

Doctors and the Endemic Culture of Permission

Health Care and the Visibility-Value Continuum

Reactive and Creative Spaces

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Footer

What is 33 Charts?

With a mashup of curated and original content that crosses the spaces of digital health, media, communication, technology, patient experience, digital culture, and the humanities, 33 charts offers unique insight and analysis on the changing face of medicine.

Founded in 2009 as a center of community and thought leadership for the issues doctors face in a digital world, 33 charts was included in the National Library of Medicine permanent web archive in 2014.
Learn More

Foci

  • Digital culture
  • Digital Health
  • EHR/Health IT
  • Future Medicine
  • Hospitals
  • Information
  • Patients
  • Physicians
  • Process/Flow
  • Quality
  • Social/Public Media
  • Technology

Copyright © 2023 · 33 Charts · Privacy Policy