Earlier quoted context omitted.
What the U.S. actually has is a group of people intent on keeping their doctor wages high by limiting supply through regulation and bottleneck creation.
As a med school dropout (best decision of my life), were I to "go back" to early college: I would have instead pursued a BSN (which my college offered!), to set myself up into eventually becoming a nurse practitioner. That way, if I decided to not complete graduate school, I'd still have an applicable role/job within medicine. Were I to have graduated that program, I also would have been able to practice much earlier…
Additionally, while many may be knowledgable about the medications they prescribe, I have had nurse practitioners prescribe me medication they didn't even know existed, as in during my session I asked for a specific medication based on a personal recomendation from a freind in the field, they didn't know what the medication was and looked up on google and then prescribed it to me.
There are good nurse practitioners, but they simply should not be prescribing long term pyschiatric medication with the level of schooling they have.
It takes 2 years to become a nurse, and 3 years to become a nurse practitioner. Additional certification is required to prescribe certain medications, but even then the amount of training and classes a nurse practitioner will take to understamd medications is very small compared to a psychiatrist.
It's absurd. NP's have been the solution to psychiatist shortage and it seems no one cares. Most likely, because anyone who knows is zombified by SSRIs by shit NPs or is in the medical field so their vision is already clouded by bias. Nurse takeover is a joke. Anybody with 2-3 years of schooling should be relagated to changing bedpans and putting in IVs. Not functioning as psuedo doctors.