Advanced Practice Clinicians
Physicians’ areas of expertise revolve around investigating, examining, diagnosing and prescribing treatment. However, Advanced Practice Clinicians (APCs) seeking to expand their scopes of practice also claim a share of the pie. In the process, physicians may perceive the APCs to be infringing the physicians’ territory. Physicians need to get comfortable with the increased reliance on APCs because they improve access to care, health outcomes and patient satisfaction.
APCs enhance access to health care by filling the gap created by the increasing demand for critical and emergency care services since the forecasted requirement for a physician has shown a continued shortage. When APCs participate in patient care at a full extent, they enable patients to access care in a timelier way (Harms, Ewen, Metsker, Swanson & Oas, 2017). The reason is that the patients can receive treatment when they need it most instead of having to wait until when the few physicians became available to attend to them.
APCs improve medical outcomes in since have a higher degree of interaction with the patients to their ease of access when compared to the physicians. In the course of a patient’s medical visits, APCs monitor the assessments of the patients, coordinate care, and educate the patient as well as his family. Thus, the APC can form a robust provider-patient bond. This kind of relationship allows the APC to understand the patient better adding to the holistic nature of care provided to the patients reducing further complications and readmissions.
The APCs, meet the metrics for patient satisfaction by bringing productivity. Research shows that patients are equally satisfied with the examination skills, consultation times, diagnosis and prescribing of an APC as they are with a physician (Mccomiskey, Simone, Schofield, Mcquillan, Andersen, Johannes& Weichold, 2018). Due to the ease of access and the strong relationships that the APCs create with the patients and their families, patients have a high acceptance for the APCs. With such, APCs, enhance patient satisfaction.