'Are NPs Becoming Too Specialized?'
PAs aren't the only ones moving into specialties and subspecialties. NPs are doing it, too, according to ADVANCE for Nurse Practitioners.
One important finding of the 2007 National Salary and Workplace Survey of Nurse Practitioners is that NP subspecialties have mushroomed, even since the 2005 survey.
We asked NPs to choose their primary employment setting from a list of 22 choices, including "other." Over the years, the setting choices have expanded in response to what survey takers said in previous years. This year's survey included such new choices as "cardiology clinic," "diabetes/endocrinology clinic," "HIV clinic" and "oncology clinic," among others.
Even so, 24% of respondents listed "other" as their practice setting. These NPs almost always wrote in an even more specialized setting than the choices listed. For example, instead of choosing "pediatrics," one respondent wrote in "pediatric allergy and asthma clinic," another wrote "pediatric dermatology practice," another "pediatric neurology," and so on.
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