Should primary care be nurse led?

if it will be nurse led after assessment everyone will end up in hospital for further assessment

if it will be nurse led after assessment everyone will end up in hospital for further assessment

Primary care (WHO definition = first contact healthcare) is led by nurses in many 3rd world countries. The nurses do a fine job in that setting and become very experienced. A reason for this state of affirs is the low number of doctors per head of population in these countries, and many of their doctors gravitate to urban centres practising secondary care.

However, the UK and 1st World Countries' citizens have needs and wants that often extend even the skills and knowledge of experienced GPs. Thus, in our country primary care will remain mainly GP led.

primary care nurses could be dangerous to health if not well exposed to good care to be given to people

I think nurse led primary care would be an excellent move. We already have advanced nurse practitioners who fulfil a very important role and are more than capable of assessing a patients need i.e. whether they need refering on to the hospital setting or if they can safely be treated in the communtity.

With nurse prescribing too, this can only be seen as a step in the right direction.

We need to start thinking outside of the typical 'hierarcy' of healthcare which puts nurses at the bottom of the list, with the view that they just follow orders and mop brows put firmly in the past.

Perhaps consideration to physician assistants would be beneficial? PAs are trainined in medicine rather then nursing and have good working relationships with physicians.

Did you people recently hear that only 2% of med school grads are applying for primary care residency programs??? Use of the general term "nurse" is not a true representation of which nurses are prepared to lead or make a significant contribution to people in need of primary health care services. Nurse practitioners are uniquely prepared to provide primary health care services.
A majority of physicians do not want to care for patients in need of health assessments, disease preventive services. I believe Nurse Practitioners, as opposed to Physician Assistants are much more astute to the patient's needs as a whole. People are not a walking disease entity. Prior to becoming an ANP, I spent many years as a critical care nurse, keeping med students, interns and residents from killing people. However, most of my encounters with students and house staff were rewarding and very much appreciated.
Please, before making some derogatory and off the cuff comments about "nurses", I recommend checking out National NP websites, AANP.org or ACNP.org

Their is very little overlap in nurses' and doctors' training curriculum and nurses' understanding of physiology and pathophysiology is rather limited. Nurse led care may be appropriate for well circumscribed disorders where they have developed expertise. Patients though often present with more than one well circumscribed clinical problem. This is where nurses' input will be limited.
Patients' satisfaction with nurse led care can in part be explained by the fact that nurses get significantly longer clinic slots and therefore have simply got more time to interact with the patient.
Cost savings by employing nurses instead of doctors will be limited. Productivity in a nurse led clinic is lower and the salary of a specialist nurse is easily on par with that of a junior doctor/SpR.