Nurse practitioners and doctors share many skills and responsibilities, often specialize in a specific aspect of health care delivery and require licensure to operate in the field. They also share a remarkable work ethic and desire to create the greatest outcome for everyone in their care.

Licensure of Nurse Practitioners and Doctors

  • Both careers require the completion of an advanced degree and professional licensure.
  • The exact criteria for licensure may change depending on where they live and work.

Specializations for Nurse Practitioners and Doctors

  • Nurses and doctors can specialize as they wish, with their preferred patient demographic or field of study informing each area of expertise.
  • Some specializations are adult and geriatric health, psychiatric and mental health, and pediatric health.

Skills Shared by Nurse Practitioners and Doctors

  • To best assist patients, nurses and doctors must cultivate similar skills and competencies.
  • Nurses and doctors must have quick problem-solving skills, empathic communication skills, detail-oriented organizational skills and leadership skills.

Difference Between Nurse Practitioners and Doctors

Students and professionals alike should know the key distinctions between a nurse practitioner versus doctor. Understanding how the two careers coexist is key to planning long-term goals and time commitments. Many duties can overlap, but a nurse practitioner’s role differs from a doctor’s in flexibility and scope. A nurse practitioner, for example, can often be available to patients who need immediate care sooner than from a doctor, allowing nurse practitioners to serve as a frontline of defense in helping patients. Additionally, nurse practitioners and doctors differ in the extent of education they need to advance. Nurse practitioners who choose to pursue further education can earn a specialization that can deepen their knowledge and make them candidates for advancement. Nurse practitioners can pursue educational goals while still working because a nurse practitioner’s educational requirements aren’t as extensive, overall, as a doctor’s. All else being equal, this may allow them to advance to a higher level quickly. Consider some key differences in nurse practitioner versus doctor roles.

Nurse Practitioners Have More Availability Than Doctors

  • Patients seeking immediate attention can benefit from the availability of nurse practitioners to fulfill their health needs.

Nurse Differing Educational Demand

  • A nurse practitioner can expect to spend fewer years in postsecondary education earning a DNP than a doctor can expect to spend in advanced studies. However, while shorter than a doctor’s, a nurse practitioner’s advanced education is no less important to the field and is designed to open doors for nurse practitioners interested in advancing their careers.
  • Most doctor roles have greater ongoing educational requirements than nurse practitioner roles. This lets nurse practitioners spend less time in lectures and more time in their clinics or facilities helping others.

Nurse Practitioners Prescribe with Differing Levels of Oversight

Like doctors, nurse practitioners have the authority to prescribe medication in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
  • Unlike doctors, many states limit a nurse practitioner’s ability to prescribe to the full extent of their education and training (their full practice authority).
  • Limitations to a nurse practitioner’s full practice authority include doctor supervision and collaboration requirements.
  • As of 2022, according to the National Nurse-Led Care Consortium (NNCC), 25 states allow nurse practitioners to prescribe to the full extent of their practice authority, including Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, New York, and Oregon. Washington, D.C., also allows it.
  • As of 2022, according to the NNCC, 25 states impose restrictions on the ability of nurse practitioners to prescribe to the full extent of their practice authority. These states include California, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas.
  • Key distinctions between nurse practitioners and doctors regarding prescription authority:
    • Like nurse practitioners, doctors are subject to certain requirements on the way they prescribe drugs, such as electronically prescribing controlled substances or quantity limits imposed by pharmacies or insurance companies.
    • Unlike nurse practitioners, however, doctors have full authority to prescribe as they see fit, within certain state-by-state restrictions.

Nurse Practitioners Pursue Different Career Paths

  • Active nurse practitioners who seek postsecondary study under a DNP degree can develop opportunities for career advancement.
  • Some nursing career paths involve nurse practitioner specializations. These pathways include family medicine, adult gerontology acute care and psychiatric mental health. DNP-prepared nurse practitioners can also hold leadership roles, such as clinical educator and chief nursing officer. These draw on an acute understanding of recent trends in evidence-based practice, nursing informatics and project analysis.
  • Doctor specializations include anesthesiology, dermatology, cardiology and general internist treatment for nonsurgical approaches to treating internal organs.