If you're bothered by this, go to medical school
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We're bothered by NP Julie's sheer lack of self-awareness.
Typically, any job applicant with at least one functioning brain cell has the intellect to formulate a general expectation of the prospective job's salary and a self-awareness of their own position within the hierarchy of the industry they work in. While this is virtually a non-issue with physicians, who are generally highly intelligent and perpetually in demand due to their medical knowledge and irreplaceable skill set, the same certainly cannot be said of nurse practitioners, who often carry with them a grossly oversized ego and a similarly overinflated sense of self-worth. Case in point: this post by "elite" family nurse practitioner Julie Sickles, who currently works in Arizona.
We truly have to wonder how stupidly uninformed someone must be, let alone a nurse practitioner who apparently works side-by-side with physicians, to be this clueless about their position in the clinical food chain and how their salary compares to that of a physician. It's not like this is secret information - far from it, with sites like Doximity and Medscape providing comprehensive salary information and comparisons for both physicians and midlevel providers. It's hard to imagine that NP Julie has been working for some time and just found out that her physician colleagues make substantially more than she does. And we highly doubt that the nurse practitioners "do the exact same job" and "see the same types of patients" at her clinic. Logically speaking, if nurse practitioners "do the exact same job" and "see the same types of patients" as physicians at her clinic, there must be a reason why the physicians are getting paid so much more, right? (We can't corroborate the unlimited PTO for physicians, but that is admittedly pretty sweet and not the norm.) Even the most uninformed plebeian could surmise that this pay differential is commensurate with the vastly superior knowledge, training, and experience that residency-trained, board-certified physicians possess, not to mention the significant difference in malpractice liability that physicians have as opposed to non-physician practitioners.
Douglas M Brock
Apparently, Bradley University's online FNP program, where NP Julie obtained her degree, doesn't invest any of its 700-750 clinical hours in teaching its midlevel students how to perform a basic fucking Google search to understand the differences between MD/DO physicians and midlevel providers such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants. And perhaps she'd learn to appreciate her own $130,000-140,000 salary a bit more if she learned what resident physicians get paid while working 80-hour weeks.
And yet, NP Julie has the gall to bitch about "respect". Respect isn't gained or lost by having the word "nurse" in your job title, or how much your salary is. Respect is earned by knowing your place in the hierarchy of medicine and understanding the vast difference between an MD/DO physician's 7+ years of medical school, residency, and fellowship, and a nurse practitioner's 700 clinical training hours and a certificate from an online diploma mill. Honestly, given the shortage of good bedside nurses, especially in a state like Arizona that grants nurse practitioners full practice authority, we'd respect you a lot more if you stayed a nurse. If you're bothered by that, then shut up, go to medical school, and become an actual fucking physician.