CONTEXT Nurse practitioners increasingly provide primary care in a variety of settings. Little is known about how resource utilization for patients assigned to nurse practitioners compares with that for patients assigned to physicians. OBJECTIVE To compare health care resource utilization for adult patients assigned to a nurse practitioner with that for patients assigned to a resident or atte...

RESULTS: After the CME, intervention physicians (n=9) more frequently diagnosed otitis media with effusion (OME) (28% of all OM diagnoses) compared to nonintervention physicians (n=90) (11.1% OME diagnoses) (p =0.003). Analysis of 1938 OM episodes showed CME intervention physicians wrote prescriptions for 59% (95% confidence Interval (52%-66%) of episodes compared to 88% (95% CI = 82-90%) of ep...

A few months ago, I had to tell one of my attending physicians that he was wrong. His belief was based on experience, but my assertion was based on evidence. This debate, and many like it, reveals a reevaluation of the role of information in medical decisions and the doctor-patient relationship.