Illustration: Manshen Lo for Bloomberg Businessweek
Feature
What Happens When US Hospitals Go Big on Nurse Practitioners
Faster to train and cheaper to employ than doctors, NPs help American health-care companies’ bottom line—but can risk patient safety.
This is the second installment of The Nurse Will See You Now, a series documenting how the increasing reliance on ill-trained nurse practitioners is imperiling US patients.
Dale Collier had never attended medical school. But as a nurse practitioner she was empowered to oversee patient care the same way medical doctors do. She was assigned to the overnight shift at Chippenham Hospital, a facility with more than 460 beds in Richmond, Virginia, where workers say staffing is light and pressure on providers is intense.
