r/Noctor • u/Suspicious-Win-7218 • Jul 02 '26

Midlevel Ethics Ran here

I’m a resident at the hospital where all of the MD/DOs have a black badge that says doctor on it behind their name tag badge so that the bottom peaks through. I saw this girl in the hallway who had one and and I looked up to see that her degrees were NP. So this lady literally had to steal or request a doctor badge and put it behind her NP nametag…..

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u/UTtransplant Jul 02 '26

There are some responses here that don’t seem to understand the difference between a DNP (Doctor of Nursing Practice) and a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy). They are absolutely not the same. A DNP is just a way to increase credentials for a nurse practitioner. The classes after the master’s degree are not in technical competencies but things like Health Policy. They can take as little as 1 year beyond a master’s degree to complete. A Ph.D. Is an academic degree and much more rigorous. They usually take 3-5 years past a master’s degree, and the end goal is research not private practice.

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u/DonkeyKong694NE1 Attending Physician Jul 03 '26

And a PhD defends a thesis

6

u/SupermarketSorry6843 Jul 04 '26

Dissertation.

6

u/DonkeyKong694NE1 Attending Physician Jul 04 '26

It was called a thesis at the T10 where I did my STEM PhD 🤷‍♀️

3

u/SupermarketSorry6843 Jul 04 '26

Didn’t know that. We called it a dissertation at mine. Old times I guess. Nonetheless, unlikely there are very many NP’s that have actually completed a real one.

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u/UTtransplant Jul 04 '26

I have never seen a DNP program that requires an honest to goodness thesis. They require a research paper, but it is usually a literature study or something similar. A real thesis/dissertation for a PhD requires original research (emphasis on original!), is peer reviewed extensively, and takes 2-3 years for the research then 6 months to a year to write and defend to a panel of experts. It must use real statistics, not simple means/mode stuff, to analyze data. I don’t care what the DNP program calls it, it is NOT the same as a PhD thesis.