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Message: [QUOTE="temery, post: 5238126, member: 1"] but there are urgent care facilities everywhere. I find nurse practitioners spend more time with patients and they're able to handle pretty much the same things a family physician can do. They likely write more referrals, but they very much know what they're doing. and each time that I've been to an emergency room in the past few years, a nurse practitioner is the one who took care of me. Yes, there were doctors on hand, but nurse practitioners do a fair amount of the work. when I was younger, I became an EMT. My uncle was a trauma surgeon who worked out of the Springfield Hospital emergency room. He let me shadow him for a couple weeks. The end of the day he would ask me if I had any questions. Very first day I asked who the two doctors were that we're standing in the corner during a trauma. He said a fair number of the doctors in emergency rooms are interns, residence or new doctors who are just picking up shifts for the money. Very few were even close to being qualified to handle trauma. When a trauma came in the paramedics would help my uncle stabilize the person. They usually worked for about a half an hour with my uncle. This was the 70s, and many if not most EMT/paramedics were former military medics. They had dealt with trauma on a daily basis. [/QUOTE]