What is a Nurse Practitioner? A nurse practitioner is a nurse qualified to treat certain medical conditions without the direct supervision of a physician. What does this mean for hospitals and clinics as the dynamics of healthcare change, with a shortage of GPs and hospitals seeking alternatives to fill the gaps? Nurse practitioners have a brief history across the spectrum of medical history. They have had a difficult journey to become who they are today and for the future of the practice. Thelma Ingles helped develop pioneering nurse practitioners in the 1950s at Duke University. She worked alongside Eugene A. Stead Jr., MD, to help lay the foundation for what nurse practitioners would become. They designed the program to expand what a nurse has learned to understand the basics of exams and take patient histories into account. At Duke, they envisioned a new health care professional who would replace a physician in routine care performed by a physician in a hospital setting. Experts had already predicted the future sho...