While our profession continues to go down a path that restricts and contracts our own scope of practice, you have to admire the way nurses go about their business-and they put their money where their mouth is by appropriately funding research that demonstrates their outcomes are as effective as specialist physician counterparts.

This NY Times article gives the backdrop to 2 studies related to nurse anesthetics which essentially concluded that there is no significant difference in the quality of care when delivered by a CRNA or by an anesthesiologist.   In an environment where healthcare is attempting to lower costs, a potential strategy is to use force multipliers-providers who can provide the same set of services at a lower cost. Nurses to their credit are setting the standard for this in many areas including mid level practitioners who have prescriptive authority in most states and are demonstrating outcomes in places like MinuteClinics to be just as effective as other settings.  Who would have ever envisioned free standing nurse practitioner practices 10 years ago?

Appears that nurses have successfully expanded their practice and demonstrated efficacy and cost-effectiveness at the same time.  Time to hold them out as exemplars that we can learn from.

The question isn’t whether physical therapists can be force multipliers and game changers in musculoskeletal medicine (this has been demonstrated in the military for years) but how?

larry@physicaltherapist.com