Comment by tptacek

In the case of nursing, which is the most popular incarnation of the trope, what it also means is that our first line of health care in the United States are doctors, who are expensive and scarce. "Nurses", who really ought to be called "Associate Doctors" or something similar, do a far better job at handling that job. But the (gendered!) lower status of "nursing" both keeps us from expanding the corps of Nurses-Practitioners as far as we could, and also retards acceptance of NP's as an alternative to full MDs for routine care.