AMA to Wall Street Journal: Misleading for nurses to introduce themselves as a doctor

Wall Street Journal
Letter to the Editor

To the Editor:

We have the deepest respect for nurses, and the AMA wholeheartedly believes that each member of the health care team plays a critical role in ensuring patients get the best possible care. But it's an undeniable fact that a nurse with a graduate degree does not have the same education and training as a physician who has completed medical school and residency training, and it's misleading for nurses to introduce themselves to patients as a doctor, (Make Room for Dr. Nurse, April 2).

While standards for the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) are presently being devised, nursing organizations currently recommend DNP students complete just 1,000 hours of "practical experience" after obtaining a Bachelor's degree. Physicians complete more than 12 times that amount during their graduate education. In addition to the two years of clinical rotations physicians fulfill during their four years of medical school, they also complete three or more years of full-time medical residency training.

The DNP program with the one-year residency training mentioned in the article is far from the norm. While one DNP graduate may complete a two-year program including a one-year residency, another can complete the program entirely online and without any patient care experience.

The bottom line is: for patients to receive high quality care, all members of the health care team need to be adequately trained and educated to provide the services they perform. Our patients deserve nothing less.

Sincerely,

Edward L. Langston, MD
Board Chair, American Medical Association