Coming from a Northern European perspective (I’m a Danish resident) the complaining about midlevel encroachment on this subreddit has been quite baffling to me.

In Denmark “encroachment” is generally encouraged and very much desired. Doctors no longer want to do veinous or arterial punctures, ECG’s, tracheal suctions, or manage the treatment of chronic diseases with established guidelines such as hypertension, heart failure, simple diabetes management or other stable chronic diseases. Nurses taking up these tasks frees up physicians to focus on more important tasks.

There’s already a shortage of healthcare workers, and having doctors perform tasks that mid-levels could do just leads to inefficiency and a worse performing healthcare sector.

 As I see it, the role of doctors is to navigate the difficult times when new medications are released and treatment guidelines for a new disease have yet to be established. As soon as guidelines are standardized and in place, we hand off the treatment to midlevels to go conquer the next frontier of medicine.

By now there’s ample evidence on the effectiveness of nurse-led clinics for an increasing number of disease, and if a nurse can lead a clinic as well as a physician, there’s generally no need for the physician to perform this task.  

TL;DR Having physicians perform tasks a mid-level can do is inefficient.