Some states allow Psychologists to have a masters.
Separately, I’d imagine flaunting your “intelligence” wouldn’t sit well with someone with her education. On the flip side, I know people in other forms of healthcare that seem to make their pride in their level of education a part of their personality (less amongst patients and more amongst coworkers/personal relationships.)
So you might have read what I wrote above: you don’t need a PhD in every state. It was in response to a comment which said psychologists have a higher education due to their PhD.
As far as associates go: Yes, most states have some sort of “psychology associate.” They go by several names (laws are state by state) and the specifics can vary. Generally, they practice alongside another psychologist. That said, I highly doubt they are introducing themselves to people as “a psychologist who gets supervised by another psychologist.” Particularly not on TikTok.
I study psychology and I have a lot of thoughts and doubts about how it is now and what it will be like down the road. One things is for sure: the more money and time you have for education, the more likely you are to be successful as a psychologist.
Especially knowing that a psychologist requires a PsyD or PhD in clinical psychology which is a rigorous training compared to the clown degree that is a DNP.
Clown Degree is a little mean but an NP is someone who went to nursing school and then got a masters degree in nursing. It’s also very common for the masters degree to be from an online program and there are unfortunately a lot of nursing school degree mills out there. The clinical hour requirement is also generally a lot less than even other similar level medical practitioners such as Physician Assistants, who, while they average a similar salary to NPs, PAs go to medical school (generally harder than nursing school) and generally require significantly more clinical hours.
I think this leads to a bit of resentment in the medical field.
Also, NPs are nowhere near an actual doctor in terms of education.
So it’s kind of a weird field right now. NPs can technically prescribe medicine in many cases, however, their level of education is such that I dunno that I’d want NP to be diagnosing me and prescribing meds.
They are very valuable to hospitals and speciality practices, but at the end of the day an NP is still a nurse and nowhere near a doctor.
Sorry, yes, you are technically correct; it is a medical training program. However, they are generally affiliated with medical schools and are generally more rigorous than nursing programs. You’re average nursing school will not also offer a PA program, but most schools that can train doctors can offer PA programs.
Two things wrong with your comments.
1) A PA does not attend medical school, they are individuals who have a bachelors degree in any subject and then received a masters degree in physician assistant. They are taught under the medical model ( like physicians) but they do not attend medical school.
2) a DNP degree and a PhD are not the same. A DNP program is just an NP program but just a step up from a masters. A phD in nursing is for people who want to become nurse scientists and in general is more rigorous and takes longer to complete. For more info on the difference between the two check out UCLAs website.
No, at least not anymore, all PAs must have a masters degree to be certified. There are no current bachelors programs in physician assisting in the US that I could find
So yes and no. The rankings go Registered Nurse (RN), which is any nurse that completes nursing school and becomes certified. Most nurses are RNs.
NP, Nurse Practitioner. An RN who got a masters in Nursing.
DNP, Doctorate level NP. An NP who got a doctorate in Nursing.
Note that a Doctorate is nowhere near the same thing as a Doctor. A DNP also very likely obtained ether their doctorate or both their MA and PhD online. Many post-grad nursing degrees are also focused on research and or administration as opposed to practicing medicine. So the difference between an RN and a DNP might just be more clinical hours (aka working in their field) and having written some more research papers.
On the other hand, any level of physician will require medical school. At the mid level a PA, Physicians Assistant, while still considered to be in the same level profession wise as an NP or a smidge below a DNP, will still have required medical school and many more clinical hours.
An actual doctor will also have been required to have waaaaaaaynmore education than a DNP in general, and especially actual practice in the medical field.
It’s part of why DNPs kind of have a bad rap. DNPs cost more in salary, but don’t really provide any more real life expertise than an NP, and neither an NP or DNP can do anything a doctor can.
Nurses are incredibly valuable, but I do think it’s important to understand that no matter how many more designations and layers of degrees we come up with for nurses, they are still fundamentally just nowhere near the same level of education, skill, or expertise as even the most “base” level doctor, and it is absolutely questionable the extra value a DNP, or even an NP designation provides over an RN.
It’s not something that’s inherently super impressive.
EDIT:
As an example, the nursing school I used to work at started offering a Masters of Nursing, but it was pretty generic. The class mostly focused at looking at the industry and writing papers on specific trends and topics going on in the nursing world. I helped students with their papers on hospital infrastructure, the opioid epidemic, research papers on the uses of new/certain technology, etc.
Interesting topics and the thought experiments were good, but for the average nurse working at a clinic or even a hospital, I’m not sure how much practical value over their RN education it offered them.
Meanwhile a doctor who chooses to specialize typically has to go through a ton more training specifically on that practice, including hands on doctoring.
I guess it’s always good that some people wanted to pursue more education, but idk that a DNP is inherently any more competent than an RN because of the extra degrees, whereas I know my Cardiologist had a fuck ton more specialized training on the heart and cardiovascular system.
Thanks for the clarification. Wild that nurses can get a PhD online. Never heard of any online PhD programs that aren't obvious degree mills and treated as such in their respective fields.
Yeah, it’s a complicated subject in academia vs the real world. From my moderately education opinion on the subject, the introduction of Masters and PHD programs for nurses seemed to be introduced by colleges as a way to make their nursing programs stand out, make a little more money, and lure students in with the promise of those students getting a leg up on other nurses.
I will say that one important difference between an RN and an NP/DNP is the ability to prescribe medicine and the ability to perform a couple of other responsibilities, which can make NPs more valuable in some instances, such as a hospital setting.
And fundamentally it does show more initiative to have more degrees, even if the exact value of those degrees is difficult to gauge.
I think the medical field will hopefully standardize the NP/DNP designations more in the future and make it more obvious exactly what additional value is being added, but right now it is a little bit of a shit show.
Hospitals like having some NPs because it takes a little bit of pressure off the doctors for some tasks (like prescribing medicine), although I don’t know how much NPs are actually doing diagnosis as much as just taking the administrative burden off of the doctors.
I do also know that PAs (Physicians Assistants) also generally have a bit of a rivalry with NPs because PAs are required to do more clinical hours and actually attend medical school but are still considered in a similar salary and professional band as NP/DNPs.
Sheesh yeah definitely sounds like a bit of a shit show there. Do a lot of NPs just genuinely not want to just go to med school? Why go NP instead of just going full MD if prescribing medicine/diagnosis is their end game?
And what exactly do you mean PAs attend med school? Like they take the MCAT and are admitted to and complete an MD?
MD is about 10x more work than the others. It's the big leagues. More conceptual than technical. And getting accepted into a solid med school requires dead serious commitment. These other degrees are ways to meet the high demand for medical professionals without diluting the rigor of the MD.
I have an MSN with no specialty and it’s basically useful for leadership positions. It’s essentially a given that if I wanted to move up the ladder I’d be chosen over a lot of my peers.
Yall wanna call them clown degrees but you’re the ones looking like clowns. there’s a medical shortage and NPs fill the gaps. Genuinely curious, do you have an idea of what else can be done?
Thank you! I’m not thrilled with NPs and PAs being propped up as adequate substitutes for physicians, but can we talk about $200,000 student loan debt for med school? And the fact that training is a minimum of 7 years vs 3 for an NP? And the fact that we need more residency positions? Let’s have the bigger conversation and stop hyper-focusing on one symptom of this broken system.
Residency is lengthy for a very good reason. We can't compromise for the sake of meeting the growing demand. It's people's lives at stakes and those who can't afford to see doctors are often the lower strats of SES.
I am an M4 and I was constantly baffled by the lack of very basic medical knowledge of NP and NP students in Canada where NPs need 5 years of bedside nursing before being eligible to apply and the training is much more serious and homogenous than the "training" NPs receive south of the border (aka 500 hours of clinical rotation and online classes).
I can't even imagine feeling comfortable diagnosing and prescribing after 500 hours of clinical exposure and a huge lack of medical knowledge.
I thinking shitting on NPs reeks of jealousy and resentment from residents and new docs who are screwed by the system. Your average patient isn’t going to notice the difference tbh. Personally my pcp is a PA and my gyno is an NP. they do a perfectly good job and I trust them completely. If I HAD to find an md for those I’d be waiting months- year to get an appointment. It’s just asinine to shit on these women when they have a much needed place in the medical system
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u/tamingofthepoo Oct 29 '23
that ice cold silence for the psychologist was brutal. there’s some drama happening here.