The medical system provides a really clear example of this.
The following is a rough summary of credentials that allow you to be a nurse practitioner. It’s been a long time and I might have the names of the credentials wrong, but I’m really sure that these were the levels as described to me by a school recruiter:
PhDs in NP do research that is practical compared to e.g. biologists but not immediately translatable to patient care. Master of Science in Nursing do clinical practice Doctorates in NP translate between the PhDs’ research and clinical practice, including doing their own research on implementation details.
There’s interplay between these groups, and also people play at different levels to inform their main levels. A given DNP might talk to MSNs to learn what problems they have, or they might work one day a week in a clinic. They have to read enough PhD research and foundational science to understand what’s worth translating into practice.
My impression is NP PhDs don’t do clinical work nearly as much (although one of the nice things about nursing is flexibility, so probably some do, if only for the money). They’re selected for ability to do research and that’s how they spend their time- but they do need to be able to talk to DNPs, or their work will never be used.
You see the same continuum in doctors, with a slightly less convenient naming scheme. MDs could be anywhere between 100% clinical practice and 100% advising other people who do medical research while not actually running any studies themselves. The research done by MDs is attempting to practicalize the more foundational work coming out of biology, who are typically professors with what used to be very long time horizons.
And of course both NPs and MDs are dependent on line-level nurses and certified nursing aids doing the minute-to-minute care and responding when the machines beep.
The medical system provides a really clear example of this.
The following is a rough summary of credentials that allow you to be a nurse practitioner. It’s been a long time and I might have the names of the credentials wrong, but I’m really sure that these were the levels as described to me by a school recruiter:
PhDs in NP do research that is practical compared to e.g. biologists but not immediately translatable to patient care.
Master of Science in Nursing do clinical practice
Doctorates in NP translate between the PhDs’ research and clinical practice, including doing their own research on implementation details.
There’s interplay between these groups, and also people play at different levels to inform their main levels. A given DNP might talk to MSNs to learn what problems they have, or they might work one day a week in a clinic. They have to read enough PhD research and foundational science to understand what’s worth translating into practice.
My impression is NP PhDs don’t do clinical work nearly as much (although one of the nice things about nursing is flexibility, so probably some do, if only for the money). They’re selected for ability to do research and that’s how they spend their time- but they do need to be able to talk to DNPs, or their work will never be used.
You see the same continuum in doctors, with a slightly less convenient naming scheme. MDs could be anywhere between 100% clinical practice and 100% advising other people who do medical research while not actually running any studies themselves. The research done by MDs is attempting to practicalize the more foundational work coming out of biology, who are typically professors with what used to be very long time horizons.
And of course both NPs and MDs are dependent on line-level nurses and certified nursing aids doing the minute-to-minute care and responding when the machines beep.