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Biomedical subjects

Mary O Mundinger

Publications and source records attributed to Mary O Mundinger.

4 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2002

Twenty-first-century primary care: new partnerships between nurses and doctors.

What role will advanced practice nurses (APNs) play in tomorrow's health care system? The author shares her answer to this question by first looking at the history of APNs and nurse practitioners (APNs whose focus is primary care), explaining what they do, and tracing their increasing success in overcoming long-standing barriers to full acceptance as providers of care. The author emphasizes that while APNs' advancement has usually been based on demonstrating sameness of practice processes and outcomes with those of physicians, in actuality, APNs-whose advanced primary care is delivered with full accountability and is indistinguishable from such care delivered by physicians-offer a different style of practice, which involves caring, nurturing, support, engagement with patients, attention to illness prevention and health promotion, and patient education. It is this difference on which APNs' survival rests. The author then discusses the educational training, economic, marketplace, and other questions that must be answered if APNs and physicians are to achieve a non-competitive, richer future, one in which both work together as partners rather than as members of a hierarchical team. Ultimately, such a future will be possible only when APNs have the same independence, access to patients, and voice in the treatment plan that physicians do.

Forecasting↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Essential health care: affordable for all?

Access to affordable health care has become a national crisis. The uninsured have many faces and many reasons for being uninsured. The nation cannot afford to sustain this broken system; not in terms of resources, nor in terms of the deteriorating health of the public. Universal coverage could offer a promising opportunity to begin to ameliorate the unsustainable use of expensive illness care now substituting for effective low-cost prevention and early detection. A proposal for essential health care coverage, a balance between cost and choice to maximize use of beneficial care, is presented.

Adult↗