ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how the three subgroups that are most closely involved in medical practice can work more effectively with physicians to improve the quality of care available to the American people. These three professions are nurse practitioners, certified nurse-midwives, and physician assistants, which together are known as the traditional non-physician clinicians (NPCs). The evolution of the professional categories that together constitute the group known as NPCs, as well as their relationship to the medical profession reflect one of the most interesting innovations in the American supply of medical personnel in recent decades. Physicians gained economic power in addition to enhanced professional status. The evolution of non-physician clinicians was destined one day to raise the issue of autonomous practice, however, when the nurses who sought independence from physicians, even the nursing profession itself demonstrated some opposition.
