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Health problems encountered by nurse practitioners and physicians.
Nursing Research
|May 1, 1982
Summary
Nurse practitioners and physicians manage different health problems, influenced by specialty and setting. Community-based settings are particularly suitable for nurse practitioner practice, enhancing patient care delivery.
Area of Science:
- Health Services Research
- Nursing Practice
- Medical Practice
Background:
- Understanding variations in health problem management between healthcare providers is crucial for optimizing patient care.
- Nurse practitioners (NPs) and physicians play distinct roles in ambulatory care settings.
- Variations in practice may be influenced by specialty, practice setting, and provider type.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how specialty, setting, and provider group affect the types of health problems managed by nurse practitioners and physicians.
- To compare the distributions of health problems managed by NPs and physicians across different medical specialties.
- To determine the impact of ambulatory care settings on provider management patterns.
Main Methods:
- A study of 39,243 patient visits across 16 ambulatory care clinics over 18 weeks.
- Utilized a Patient Encounter Form for data collection and the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) for coding.
- Employed proportional sampling by clinic to ensure representative data collection.
Main Results:
- Significant differences were observed in health problem distributions between nurse practitioners and physicians within each specialty.
- Medical specialty was a key factor influencing the health problems managed by both provider groups.
- Practice setting impacted health problem distributions across most specialties, with notable exceptions for 'V codes' in family practice.
- The effect of provider group on management distributions was inconclusive.
Conclusions:
- Nurse practitioners and physicians manage distinct patient health problems, influenced by specialty and practice environment.
- Ambulatory care settings significantly shape the scope of practice for both NPs and physicians.
- Community-based settings appear particularly well-suited for nurse practitioner practice, suggesting potential for optimized role utilization.