The Biased Media: The Never Ending Unfair Battle for PAs [Part I]

 

           The PA profession's portrayal by the media in the past was simply downright biased and disrespectful. I have witnessed it all—fear, hate, intolerance & extremism seem to have been the order of the day. Sadly and specifically the PA community was targeted repeatedly by misinformers. These very narrow-minded myopic detractors were not only seeking to advance their nefarious agenda, but, to detract from our proper recognition.

For the past 50 years, our profession has made great strides in many areas and respects. And while we have come a long way, it is, unfortunately, true that some physicians still try to dissuade the industry of our value even to this day.

          But even more disturbingly, & more recently, the nursing community in their ascent and quest for professional empowerment and recognition is behaving similarly to physicians at an interprofessional level.

As if this was not enough interprofessional incivility among healthcare professionals, we must also contend with another new bully-- the prejudiced media. Their reported opinionated, non-factual articles, and/or exposès, bring another discrediting force to the general medical consumer. In other words, another voice to confuse and undermine our great time-tested validated profession.

Tangible Examples of the offending Print, Radio Media & TV Networks

            Never in my mind did I ever imagine the New York Times (NYT) running stories of allegedly greedy dermatological PAs serving as “puppets” for their unscrupulous supervising employing physicians. Once again, they peg this issue & problem squarely on the “unsupervised PA assembly line” as the sole factor in compromising patient’s safety and/or welfare, rather than zeroing in on the root factor, the real culprits—uninvolved, greedy, and uncaring/exploitative dermatologists/physicians. 

            Also, a few years back in the PA Bashing bandwagon, we can find Glen Beck & Stu his sidekick in his morning radio show. Stu was playing “doctor” and giving Beck a mini-mental exam like the one the president underwent recently during his annual physical examination. At one point he made a joking remark by saying: “I will have my Physician Assistant write that down”. In this statement a PA was nothing more than a scribe or a MA.

            But there are more unimagined offenders, like “Dear Abby”. Even her… dissed us in one of her columns (July 11, 2016). She critically spoke without understanding our scope of practice when an elderly couple's husband became ill and they both were out of town and were seen & attended by a PA at a local Urgent care facility. While the article states the patient (husband) was pleased with the care received, she pointed out there should have been an MD on the premises to address all the concerns of the unhappy wife when she was unaware the provider seen was a PA.   

            Unfortunately, I cannot think of a more hypocritical & unprofessional example of this issue than the unflattering portrayal of the PA profession through the TV major Networks. For instance, one of the most recent derogatory media references was when our profession, was ridiculed in a satiric comedy show titled “Nightlife” aired on Feb 23^rd, 2015. Essentially in this particular episode our education/training and role were utterly mischaracterized and trivialized as nothing more than we all are basically “scut monkeys” pushing paperwork while trying to become physicians.

            As if that wasn’t enough, on March 4^th,2014 our profession was once again disparaged on prime-time TV on the O’Reilly Factor broadcast. Similarly, he [O’Reilly] basically grossly misrepresented our rigorous PA training and the quality of our caregiving services by stating that we were akin to “Lenny”— a fictional community college graduate metaphor he used to compare /describe our background against physicians.

 Contextually through his commentaries that night he implied the American healthcare consumer receives subpar care when care-giving services are always provided by the Physician Assistants’ community. To this author and the PA community, this Fox News report was extremely offensive, denigrating if not to mention unfair and unbalanced. It makes one wonder what ever happened to fact-checking when reporting not only on a professional group but anything else too. Almost a la “Rolling Stone” magazine fiasco when they published their nonfactual piece regarding a rape case @ Duke University.

            However, the list doesn’t end there, but Dr. Matt Hahn a PCP in Maryland also attacked our profession by saying that we’re poorly trained. Furthermore, he resented our success and went publicly to state we’re unsafe providers despite he hosted/precepted GWU PA program students as described in his posted blog on demos.org (“Are more Physicians Assistants Good or Bad for America’s Health”, June 1,2013).

            Along the same vein, a few years back Nancy Snydeman, MD former NBC News’s Chief Medical Editor misspoke about our background/role and our limited prescriptive abilities when caring for patients in a segment aired March 11^th, 2011.  In her defense and unlike the other TV show producers, she later tried to correct her statements on her Facebook page the next day. Somehow, it felt insincere. Shockingly she was the keynote speaker in our national AAPA conference during the Clinton years. 

            Contempt comes to mind if nothing else when see how our community has been wrongfully portrayed(see part II).