Are Nurses an Answer to New Primary Care Needs?

The United States has a widely acknowledged shortageof primary care physicians—fewer per capita, in fact, than any other industrialized nation (1). A recent survey (2) found that 16 % of U.S. adults who need primary care have to wait a week or more to see a physician. A big reason for this scarcity is money. Primary care pays the least of all of the medical specialties, and interest in this profession is at a low among medical students and residents (3). Meanwhile, the need for primary care physicians is growing as baby boomers retire and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act adds millions to the rolls of the newly insured. The nation will need new providers to care for these patients. A recent report (4) projects a shortage of as many as 44 000 primary care physicians by 2025. Primary care physicians who are in practice are fre-quently too busy to provide proper care to their patients