u/lovemydogwillow

Bit of a rant. I am an RN. I love nursing and am not casting shade to NPs, merely commenting on the quality of midlevel education post-COVID, which is truly frightening.

I have an RN coworker in school to be an NP at a reputable, major institution. She told me she was taking a pharmacology class--all of which was just online lectures and assignments--and she had a question about albumin levels during pregnancy as it relates to pharmacology. When she asked her professor the question, the response she got was "you should use your resources to look into it".

My coworker goes on to tell me she chatGPT'd it for the answer. I was mortified.

Maybe I am out of line here, but first of all, if you are getting an advanced degree in a medical field, watching online lectures ain't gonna do jack-shit. To quote Good Will Hunting, "you dropped 150 grand on a f***ing education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library." Second of all, if youre paying for a degree, your professor better be able to answer you question.

That's all.

Nursing was a second career for me. I initially had a psychology degree and worked in addicition medicine as a psychometrist giving competency evaluations to professionals who were under contract with their licensing boards due to concerns about ability to practice with reasonable skill and safety (95% of the time they were diversion cases among either MDs or RNs). The irony of what I am about to ask does not escape me. Wildly boring work but I saw a whole range of people working in healthcare.

After several years, I decided to go into nursing and went back to school for my BSN. While I love it, I used to want to get my psych NP.

However, I have come to several realizations: 1. The NP market, especially psych, is so oversaturated and I frankly make more as an inpatient critical care RN, 2. the peers I know who do go for the psych NP generally are doing it for the wrong reasons, and 3. If I am going to spend money on yet another degree, I want something people respect (not to impugn the intellect of my peers pursing a psych NP, but of the several I know, they are not the most ambitious or intelligent among my fellow nurses...I know that sounds harsh).

So, my question is two fold: do you think in 15 years there will be a continued market for NPs (because the way I see things going, it looks like it is almost a degree for charlatans at this point), and what would be a good alternative? I want to go to med school but as someone in their late 30s it seems almost out of reach.

A few hours ago, someone posted on this sub asking for insight about a pregnancy scare.

While many comments were helpful, about half were not constructive at all: they contained inaccurate medical information, an anecdote about a rare one-off experience an aquaintance had, or were just comments like "why didn't you use protection if you are worried about pregnancy".

I was kind of surprised that so many reactions included misinformation and/or blame.

Regardless of OP's situation/post, can we agree to either be helpful or say nothing at all? We face this sort of stuff from everyone else. We don't need it from each other.

Edit: I know I shouldn't be shocked by the level of misinformation on reddit or the internet at large. My point was to emphasize how unhelpful people can be when someone in a vulnerable situation reaches out. But again...this is the internet so I shouldn't be shocked by that either

Not looking for medical advice because I saw a doctor and have been appropriately treated. I would just like an opinion on a misdiagnosis.

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My PCP is an NP who I quite like. She seems knowledgeable and given that I am a young adult with no health concerns she is great for a simple yearly wellness check.

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Anyway, a year ago I broke out in a rash all over my body. It looked as though I had chicken pox. It was not localized to one area of my body. It was EXTREMELY itchy. No changes in my hygiene products. No exposure to any known allergen. Really there was no identifiable trigger, and this rash lasted 2 weeks and kept getting worse until I made an appointment with my NP.

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She diagnosed me with scabies. At the time I had no known exposures and it had been several months since I had been physically involved with anyone. I do, however, work in the ED of a major city hospital so she suggested I got it from a patient. Given what I know about scabies (both the presentation and how it is contracted) I found this unlikely. I insisted I had not had any prolonged skin-to-skin contact with ANYONE in months, so she relented and first prescribed oral steroids. When that did not help she went back to her initial scabies diagnosis and ordered me the treatment for that.

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Anyway, I did two rounds of permethrin treatment and cleaned my apartment like I was in the throws of mania. For two months this rash continued and kept getting worse.

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Finally, I made an appointment with a dermatologist. They did a skin biopsy because they said it was a "strange clinical picture". They told me it was either some random, unexplained case of eczema or bullous impetigo. It went away within two days of starting doxycycline.

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Am I wrong to be frustrated that I was told it was scabies right off the bat? Shouldn't there have been some other differential diagnoses?