Money honey

NewFNP has read article after article lamenting the primary care physician shortage.  Often times, this is attributed to the high cost of medical school education. It's true - med school is expensive.  It's true - physicians can make more money in specialty practice.  

Nonetheless, these articles make newFNP a little pissy.

Jut hold up, mofos.  There are nurse practitioners out there who are thrilled to be primary care providers.  Nay, they chose to be NPs because they wanted to provide primary care.  They wanted to prevent illness, they wanted to treat the whole person and not the disease.  They wanted to be part of a health care team.  They wanted to judiciously refer to specialty when the situation necessitated the referral.  

And guess what?  They have debt.  They may even have a shitload of debt.

NewFNP's fancy NP school was seven semesters in length.  The total tuition cost was in the neighborhood of $98,000.  That's just the tuition.  That's no rent, no books, no required health insurance, no specific-colored scrubs so as to identify students as students, no RN license.  That's no red wine, no haircuts, no used book cafe coffee & treats with one's lady friends.  And, at newFNP's school, there were a fair number of us who had other graduate degrees and their associated student loans.  Thank heavens for the in-school deferment!

And thank heavens for loan repayment which mercifully wiped out quite a chunk of newFNP's debt, which now totals just a smidge over $60,000.  Ah - $60,000 - it seems so reasonable.

So what is newFNP saying?  She's simply saying: yo -- NPs!  She feels your pain.  You work hard, you take good care of your patients, you pay your six-figure student loan debt.  Keep it up.  

And for those of you in fancy and pricey NP schools, it's worth it.  It's totally frigging worth it.