Nurse practitioner Manju Sharma. Manju Sharma confidently strides into the room, her white coat disappearing behind a draped curtain, and immediately begins asking questions. "How are you?" she asks the patient, who at the moment is reclined in his hospital bed. "Did you sleep all right? Did you go to the bathroom?" After collecting enough information from the patient, Robert Allen, a Barrington resident who had been admitted with chest pain complaints, she comforts him by wishing him good luck and is out the door again and back on her Friday rounds.
"People are liking us more and more," she said. "They have more confidence in us, because they can talk to us." The only thing nurse practitioners can't do is make a diagnosis. But once the doctor decides what to do with a patient, Ms. Sharma takes over.
Top Stories