Comment by sarchertech | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sarchertech | Hacker News Reader

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> Many medical facilities are only staffed with permanent nurses, with doctors helicoptering in, from time to time, to take care of specific duties that may require certain licenses, or provide specific advice.

Maybe for a very loose definition of medical facilities that includes assisted living facilities.

But for example in an ER, nurses come and go with very rapid turnover and it’s common to staff with temporary travel nurses.

> nurses tend to do most of the actual work

Techs, environmental services, phlebotomists, respiratory therapists, CNAs etc. probably do more of the “work” than nurses.

> highly experienced nurses actually taking up the mantle for many duties often done by doctors

Only if they go back to school and become a Nurse Practitioner or CRNA, but in that case they are no longer functioning as a nurse. Even then they are general operating under the direct supervision of a physician.

> Nurses are in far higher demand, than doctors.

Only in absolute numbers. It’s far harder to hire a doctor than it is a nurse. I know an ex-NFL player who works as a physician recruiter.

> Many medical facilities are only staffed with permanent nurses, with doctors helicoptering in, from time to time, to take care of specific duties that may require certain licenses, or provide specific advice.

> Maybe for a very loose definition of medical facilities that includes assisted living facilities.

Or midwives, for unimportant things like giving birth /s obviously

Nurse midwives have to go back to grad school after becoming a nurse and are no longer operating as nurses. Despite containing the word nurse it is a completely different job.

I think the only metric that matters is total medical care provided on a national / global scale.

It may take vastly more training but on average a full annual physical provides less benefit on average than a 30 second vaccination requiring minimal training. Value creation and skill are wildly different things in the medical profession.

After you've had that 30 second vaccination, the second same 30 second vaccination provides next-to-no added benefit, but the physical does.

The day after your physical doing another physical provides next to no benefit.

Healthcare is a world of diminishing returns at ever increasing costs. But that doesn’t mean the low effort first steps are less valuable.

There is no reason the medical field needs to gate keep injections. Anyone can inject, you don't need a nurse. Maybe as far as an IV with some very basic training.

Nurses may administer vaccines. (but you don’t need to be a nurse to do this. Medical assistants do it too. It’s a very easy procedure).

But nurses aren’t the driver of vaccination. Nurses are anti-vaxxers at a much higher rate than physicians, and if you removed physicians from the equation, vaccine rates would plummet.

>total medical care provided

At the end of the day a physician is responsible for every patient that comes through. Nurses are incredibly important, but all of the care they provide is at the direction of a physician, so it’s impossible to separate out “total medical care provided” into doctor vs nurse.

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