ARE THE PATIENTS OF NURSE PRACTITIONERS MORE APT TO ENGAGE IN MAINTENANCE HEALTHCARE THAN THE PATIENTS OF PHYSICIANS: A RESEARCH PROPOSAL.
Griffith, White and Gardner (2002) make the point that most people take better care of their cars than they do of their own bodies. The notion of "upkeep" is a known necessity for cars but very few people apply this concept to themselves. Instead, they wait until there is some injury or disease to the body before utilizing available healthcare services; and after a brief period of recovery, they will often no longer use these services until once again an injury or some other problem occurs. However, in order to maintain the body in a condition of continued health, there is a need for ongoing utilization of medical services, e.g., screening for various conditions, regular physical checkups, immunization, and so forth. This is termed "maintenance health care."
As Griffith et. al (2002) report, most medical clinicians consider getting their patients to engage in maintenance healthcare behavior an important and significant goal of their practice. However, a key research question that might be asked in the area of maintenance healthcare is whether some medical clinicians have a higher success rate than others in terms of getting their patients to engage in maintenance healthcare? What makes this a reasonable question is the fact that in today's health care system there are a far greater variety of medical clinicians available. Not only are their physicians but also Nurse Practitioners (NPs), Clinical Nurse Specialists (some of whom are also Nps), and so forth. Each of these clinicians receives somewhat different educational training and often this is accompanied by a different medical philosophy and focus (Griffith, White & Gardner, 2002). Therefore it is reasonable to think that this difference in training, focus and philosophy may well make for differences in terms of the degree to which the ...