Nursing vs medicine

[pharm]

What's the real difference between a doctor and a nurse ?

 

[Havox]

What's the real difference between a doctor and a nurse ?

Nurses do the minute by minute care of the patient, they're mostly the ones the patients call if there's immediate issues whereas doctors are responsible for overseeing the care of a patient, diagnosing diseases and writing care plans.

 

[perthmale]

Nurses do the minute by minute care of the patient, they're mostly the ones the patients call if there's immediate issues whereas doctors are responsible for overseeing the care of a patient, diagnosing diseases and writing care plans.

Depends on the type of nursing your talking about, big difference between Enrolled Nurse, Registered Nurse, and Nurse Practitioner. NPs do what you mentioned for doctors. The role of the EN and RN, is a focus on patient care, assisting with activities of daily care, observation of patients, administration of medications etc, doctor and NP is focused on the medical aspects of the patient, diagnosis, prescribing, pathology etc.

 

[chinaski]

NPs do what you mentioned for doctors.

…Within a considerably narrower and very well defined scope of practice.

 

[perthmale]

…Within a considerably narrower and very well defined scope of practice.

Depends what you mean by scope of practice. Scope of practice is essentially what your governing bodies, i.e. hospital boards set, in comparison to specialisation is obviously the specialty. Some have very well defined scope of practice, i.e. ED, whereas others have a very broad scope, i.e. primary health care. Also you have taken the answer out of context, the question what is the difference between a nurse and doctor, with the answer being a generalisation of nurses and doctors, and my answer was aimed at ensuring that person understands different skill sets and roles of nurses. Scope is variable from hospital to hospital. There is just over 1000 NPs in Australia now, still a long way to go, but it does offer a reasonable career path for those that want to enter nursing but want a more advanced nursing role and do not want to enter medicine.