Dr. Nurse

According to a Wall Street Journal article reprinted here, more than 200 schools of nursing plan to offer a doctoral program that will train advanced practice nurses to hone their medical skills toward those of primary care physicians. This Doctorate of Nursing Practice will require a certification exam "based on the same test physicians take to qualify for a medical license" and could begin as early as fall 2008. "By 2015, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing aims to make the doctoral degree the standard for all new advanced practice nurses." I am curious about what effect this will have on current nursing practice, specifically for newly qualified and practicing advanced practice nurses who do not hold a Ph.D., and how the hierarchy will organize itself around these new educational delineations. Not to mention that we're potentially crossing some seriously established boundaries here. Nurses become nurses because they want to nurse. If we wanted to practice medicine, we'd become doctors. And doctors don't want nurses to be doctors, not to mention "mini-doctors". It will be interesting to see how this one pans out.