What's the difference is between 'Internal Medicine' and 'General Practice?

What is the difference between the practice of nursing and medicine?

• What are the scopes of each field? What are the differences between them in terms of philosophy and practice? I once heard that medicine is the science while nursing is the art. How ...show more

• Answer:

  Nurses are mostly responsible for preventing health complications and providing health teachings to their patients including aiding them in their recovery (mental, social, physical). They provide healthcare methods (checking vital signs frequently, observing for complications before reporting them to their respective physicians, administer prescribd meds as ordered by the physician, IV insertion etc...) They basically do what is instructed to them by their physician(s). They also have certain limitations since they cannot perform at all perform medical procedures. Physician assistants, on the other hand, is the opposite (it's my career of choice actually). They basically do everything a physician does (medical procedures, prescribing meds, interpretation of lab and diagnostic results) except for the fact that they need to be supervised by an attending physician at all times. They assist in suturing during surgery and they determine the appropriate pre-operative and postoperative care for patients. And they don't do a lot of paperwork like most doctors do (call it "M.D. Lite"). The only catch is, despite its two-year program, one has to go back to school every two years (few to several months of further studying) and a requalification exam is needed every six years. Unlike most doctors, who usually take the exam once. But in all likelihood, physician assistants are usually graduates who have had a previous healthcare background (nursing, medical technologist, physical therapists etc..). The pay is extremely good (70k-110k yearly) provided you want to be the kind of person who likes to work in different fields of medicine unlike physicians who are basically stuck to their own field of specialty.