Nowadays professional practice boundaries between Physicians and PAs are no longer specialty-specific. Yet, some would like to return to those days. In fact, in many instances, this is especially true outside surgical or interventional medical subspecialties. Clearly, over the past several decades this crossing of professional boundaries has become less distinct due to the evolving clinical proficiency of PAs into the practice of mainstream medicine. As the delivery of medical services has become more of a patient-centric team-based model, we have also seen this advancement of Scope of Practice accelerate in order to meet the demands and needs of an industry that is constantly and rapidly evolving @ a dizzying speed.
The reframing of clinical practice in which PAs undertake many tasks previously performed by physicians is not a new phenomenon. During the past several decades this has been the case in conjunction with the advancement and evolution of technology and SOP.
This phenomenon has significantly shifted the traditional (limited) role of PAs as merely assisting Physicians in the provision of medical services. These forces have come into play favorably to our community by allowing us a much much more autonomous role as professional skillful providers than we were back in the beginning. Thus, to imply or merely see us only as “Physician Assistants” would be very myopic since it is a very inaccurate description of our roles. Particularly when seen from a glance perspective rather than looking deeper & understanding & knowing the real nuances of this antiquated industry professional misnomer.
Essentially such a position would be akin to being misinformed or misled by an incorrect understanding of an idea or concept. On a closer look is not a case of two separate Healthcare domains with one profession being superior to the other, but rather the case of two close professions simply seeking to advance medical care to the American medical consumer from a common perspective: one of increasing quality and access of healthcare collaboratively.
Reductions of many practice paradigms are becoming the order of the day in the practice and delivery of medicine. So does this mean that PAs have to remain Siloed inaccurately in non-descriptive professional terms? Do we still see ourselves as merely assistants to the Physician community? The simple answer to these questions is no, because in practice we provide physician-like services ourselves much like our counterparts do–the physicians. Anything short of recognizing PAs as skillful & cost-effective Physician Associates would continue to be divisive rhetoric of a continued industry interprofessional “Apartheid” mindset seemingly rising nowadays again. After all, our rigorous training parallels the medical model very closely, and so does our mission, vision & philosophy…so shouldn’t we put semantics aside, and continue moving our industry forward?
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