Nurse practitioner

“The primary point of reference for the nurse practitioner is arguably not truly nursing (no matter how much nurses insist it is) but, instead, medicine and economics. Nurse practitioners have recurringly been promoted and have presented themselves as a cheap albeit excellent alternative to physicians. Medicine and economics, not nursing ideals, remain the ‘gold standard’ against which the nurse practitioner is promoted and judged. . . . In medical and public policy discourse, the identity of the nurse practitioner as a nurse is elided. The nurse practitioner is a ‘mid-level’ provider in a vertical hierarchy still dominated by the physician. The nurse practitioner is a ‘physician extender’: the Hamburger Helper of health care” (Sandelowski, 190, 191).