Thursday 23 May 2013

Physician Assistant Vs Nurse Practitioner Jobs - Differences and similarities

Physician Assistant Vs Nurse Practitioner Jobs - Differences and similarities

Medical assistants also known as BP are very similar to the nurses and yet different in many fronts. While both are medical professionals to provide quality health care, in fact there are some fundamental differences in the two jobs, in particular with reference to salaries and specialties.

Nurses Vs Physician Assistants - their functions overlap?

Physician Assistant jobs mainly involve practicing medicine under the direction of physicians and surgeons. A medical assistant do everything so delegated by a physician and may include diagnosis, treatment and prevention. They will take the health history of the patients, examination, order laboratory tests or x-rays if necessary, perform diagnostics and eventually treat diseases or injuries as under the direction of the physician. PA is sometimes also counsel patients and may even have some managerial duties.


Nurse practitioners, on the other hand, also practice medicine and perform tasks such as diagnosis and management of chronic diseases and children, independently or as part of a medical team. Focus on health maintenance, disease prevention and sometimes counseling and patient education.

The key differences:

One of the fundamental differences in the work of nurse and physician assistant Jobsis nurses who practice medicine under the nursing model and physician assistants under the medical model.

Another difference is that NP's work in "collaboration" with doctors in a nursing role while assistants work under the "supervision" of a physician. The PA so they are less independent than SN.

NP, for example, may prescribe by notice, most of the PA can not afford to do it and will do so only under the guidance and supervision of a doctor. PA is usually practiced under the license of the physician and a physician is needed in place while beforehand NP practiced registered nurses who practice independently and are permitted autonomy in most states in the United States.

NP can obtain certification from the American Nurses Credentialing Center and the American Academy of Nursing. On the other hand PA are certified by NCCPA is the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants

Finally, another difference is the salary, PA to do a little more than NP when average annual salary. While a physician's assistant who works full time would be $ 94,870, $ 90,583 a nurse make a year.

The similarities:

It is expected that both physician assistants and nurses who come with a Bachelor and Master degree rear. It is highly preferred certain amount of training on the job. Both perform similar functions of diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of patients. In both short medical assistance, one essential and one supervision with or without supervision.

These two works are very important in the medical field and also to popular career options.

We can therefore conclude that, although the two works are similar and have similar educational needs, jobs as medical assistants allow little independence and autonomy from jobs as nurses, but also make a slightly higher salary , especially in the long term, once you have been in practice for some years.

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