Is the Nurse Practitioner Job Boom Putting US Health Care at Risk? - Bloomberg

They don’t merely support doctors—NPs increasingly treat patients independently, including in specialty practices and emergency rooms. When they aren’t well trained, the results can be tragic.

This is the first part of The Nurse Will See You Now, a series documenting how the increasing reliance on ill-trained nurse practitioners is imperiling US patients.

When Fred Bedell entered the emergency room on Oct. 12, 2020, he was in the throes of tremendous abdominal pain. The situation was frightening, but Bedell, a 60-year-old father of two, had little reason to doubt that he’d receive anything except excellent care at Florida Lake City Hospital, a 113-bed facility about 60 miles west of Jacksonville. For the past several years, the local chamber of commerce had named it the “Best of the Best.”