Basically it's very hard and takes forever and costs about half a million in student loans to become a medical doctor, so a bunch of people came up with the idea to offer specialist training to experienced nurses and then give them similar practicing authority as a resident physician (i.e. limited scope of work under the direct superfision of an attending physician).

Born was the nurse practitioner.

Then some dumbfucks decided that instead of people going to nursing school, working up experience as a nurse and then going to NP school, they could set up ~3 year directly-to-NP schools.

Oh and a considerable bunch of states now allow those medical retards to perform their witch doctory without the supervision of an attending, making them essentially attendings themselves as far as their authority goes.

Basically they're absolutely dogshit nurses (because they've never done any practical nursing) who pose as medical doctors, have very little idea of anything because they never went to med school let alone put in the clinical hours after, but get to prescribe you benzodiazepines and opiates anyways. They're objectively shitty healthcare providers and their education doesn't even measure up to the US Step 2 level (which is a mid-study exam a med school student must pass... Then there's a Step 3, and multiple years of residency before they are allowed to work unsupervised).