For the first time, health advocates have designated a specific month for national attention to pediatric obesity. September is National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, and as we near its end I'd like to share what a few nurse practitioner students have done to call attention to it. Last weekend, three NP students from Samuel Merritt ...

''You may not know it, but the person you see at the doctor's office may be a nurse practitioner and not a physician,'' reads the opening line of an article in Rochester, Minn.'s news channel web site (''Nurse practitioners help patients more often'' - http://www.kttc.com/Global/story.asp?S=9054490).  The article does a good job of depicting the ...

A nice article about nurse practitioners showed up in the New York City edition of yesterday's New York Times. Although titled ''Yes, the P.A. Will See You Now,'' the article looks at both physician assistant and NP roles, and it does a good job covering education, salary and job experience. The reporter does once refer to NPs and PAs as ...

The article starts out promising good PR for nurse practitioners: ''Peggy O'Donnell, a Lynbrook nurse practitioner, knows a thing or two about picking a good primary care physician.'' This is O'Donnell's opportunity to explain that an NP often can be your primary care provider — and even better, that there are studies that show that NP care is ...

  Opening my Providence (Rhode Island) Journal this morning (OK, online), I saw yet another report on physician objections to retail or convenient care clinics. The same article, but with different names, has been showing up about once a week somewhere in the country for the past 3 years. The article always cites physician charges that ...