Thread by @Suburbanbella

LONG TWEET. The WGN report by Rich McHugh set off a firestorm. The American Association of Nurse Practitioners(AANP) is on the defensive, claiming it disparaged NPs. Doesn't matter that WGN's anchorman clearly stated it was about transparency in health care, which all HCPs should

2)support. Nope, they had to resort to the predictable victimhood role and gaslighting to which we all have become accustomed. No comment about the parents and the fact that they were lied to, didn't even register on their radar. What became apparent after that story is that Full

3)Practice Authority(FPA) aka: "independent" practice aka: practicing medicine w/o a medical license should never have been an option in the U.S., because it represents two-tiered care. Now the AANP has set out to prove they are being discredited because physicians had the

4)unmitigated gall to question their "evidence". Something lazy a** legislators should have done but didn't. There is no "alarmist" agenda or conspiracy by "organized medicine". There is simply presentation of facts and disputation of alleged "facts". The high quality care the

5)AANP claims they provide is indeed disputable(). NP education USED to be of high quality. Not anymore. Why? Because the nursing educational system chose not to maintain their former excellent standards. When one devalues their own education, the

5)inevitable result will be substandard. Can't fake it until you make it in medicine because human beings aren't objects. They talk. They react. They manifest the results of mediocre care. Their mismanagement is evident and has to be addressed. Because healthcare professionals

6)are human, errors(which may or may not rise to the level of malpractice/negligence), are to be expected. But when those numbers deviate from the "norm", it raises red flags. It did. You see, when the Institute of Medicine(now National Academy of Medicine) published its paper

7)on the "Future of Nursing" in 2010, the goal was to transform the landscape of physician-led healthcare to nursing-led. For the record, there was no mention of a "team" approach. Of course the mission was fully supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and several nursing

8)organizations. Problem is, they didn't formulate a good plan on how to achieve this goal. What was understood is that a whole hell of a lot of NPs were needed. This created an opening for the proliferation of degree mills which have flourished--unchecked. Standards for becoming

9)a NP dropped. Those graduates eventually entered the workforce. What did anyone with common sense expect when an individual untrained and unlicensed in medicine is allowed to practice it? Stellar results? The degree mills are the norm and are responsible for producing the

10)majority of NPs today. There is no proof that since FPA the quality of care being provided is outstanding. Because not one state, regulatory, nursing or legislative body, since the passage of FPA, has followed up quality of care before and after FPA. Not one. But how does one

11)mask this production of substandard NPs and add undeserved credibility? Make it easy to get a "doctorate". It also helped that corporate medicine conflated HCPs under the umbrella "provider". The AANP signed on to what they refer to as "provider neutral" terms; thereby

12)indirectly endorsing lack of transparency. Great for them, not so great for patients. The NPs who do not support FPA, whom I believe are in the majority, say nothing. They are not opposing where it counts, in their state legislatures. They are invisible and thus ineffective.

13)The AANP, who is leading the FPA campaign, cannot be more clear about their goal, which is nursing-led medicine. They are simply not interested in physician-led care or a team. Period. They attempt to discredit and label individuals who oppose FPA as anti-nurse practitioners.

14)MedTwitter accounts opposing FPA, they are coming for you to have your accounts shut down for "harassing" them with facts. The irony is the AANP, a so-called professional organization, put out a bullying call TO ALL THEIR MEMBERS to attack WGN/Rich McHugh. And for those of

15)us who opposed Section 5 of the Medicare Executive Order, “Protecting and Improving Medicare for our
Nation’s Seniors”, and it included several medical organizations, there were no inaccuracies. Just s**t the AANP didn't like.

16)I maintain that there was very little enmity between NPs and physicians until the AANP decided that they were equivalent to primary care physicians. There is a reason that no nursing organization has followed up quality of care in one FPA state now that NPs are unsupervised.