Discourse and occupational perspective: A comparison of nurse practitioners and physician assistants

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
There are two occupations which currently prepare workers for the mid‐level provider role: the occupation of nursing (nurse practitioners) and the occupation of physician assistant. Through training, these occupations provide their members with specialized health care knowledge which is used to manage patients and their problems. Nursing claims to provide its members with a perspective toward health care that is very distinct from the perspective shared by the profession of medicine and physician assistants. Using field observations and recordings of interactions between two physician assistants and one nurse practitioner and patients in a health maintenance organization, this paper examines the manner and extent to which these differences in perspective actually affect the interactive strategies used in patient encounters. This study shows how the macro issue of differences in occupational perspective can be incorporated into micro studies of the form and content of talk used in social interaction.