Image from Gerd Altmann ( Pixabay.com )
There’s a troubling trend in the healthcare industry that in spite of living in the information age the threat & spread of misinformation about the PA community is real and becoming more dangerous. Ask any Physician Assistant who has practiced over the past 50 years. Unfortunately the PA community has lived and endured @ times a myriad of misguided & quite often ill-motivated views & mischaracterizations of our profession by many including the media Sadly, this negative or distorted representation is simply based on a lack of basic understanding of our profession. In other words, irresponsible reporting & lack of real basic understanding of our training, our scope of practice, etc.
Yet, the PA profession has rapidly expanded with doubling the number of educational programs and the number of graduates (i.e. class sizes) that has substantially increased. Moreover our profession is evolving and increasing the access of care in our very fragmented industry. Unfortunately some physician organizations, namely the AMA, ACEP and a few others are portraying our profession unfavorably to lay audiences all across the country. Why? Because curtailing recent further legislative advancements allows them to continue to monopolize & control Advance Practice Providers since we have grown from our “Assistant” moniker. Plus the world continues to evolve as well as our Scope of Practice. And all due to our excellent track record corroborated by many studies throughout the years time after time.
Surprisingly The AMA's stance and view on our advancement has been extremely unsupportive if not downright hostile and unprofessional of the medical community.. Basically attempting to delegitimize our contributions by insinuating, implying either implicitly or explicitly our care provided to the American healthcare consumer without any data or factual information is disinformation at its best in their so called allegations of inferior or subpar quality provided by us. Basically they based their views on med malpractice data against Physician Extenders ( NPs / PAs / Midwives and CRNAs, etc.)
Unfortunately, the AMA and sister organizations rather than drawing all providers, payors and patients together is furthering the division with these divisive allegations in the media, print and/or social media platforms. This slam and divisive tactic is not fair to patient nor Advanced Practice Providers since this view / behavior perpetuates the lack of access of care by targeting our community and blemishing our legacy by undermining our role in the healthcare industry.
The reality of the situation is this: it is a terrible shame that some members of the medical community choose to make this a matter of competence among various inter-professional medical providers all seeking to meet the medical needs of our society. We could just as easily argue and point out that the physician community is not with their share of “bad apples”. Is always easily to see shortcoming in others but not ourselves. Our Brand less professional identity has been both unintentionally & intentionally used by those who would perpetuate professional ignorance, sow interprofessional rivalry or /industry divisions for their own gain, thus perpetuating their agenda or “turf battles” as it is known inside the industry or cancel culture --the new paradigm seen in our society.
I urge the American healthcare consumer, the freelance media writers,and the recruiting consultants or even hospital administrators/physician group practice managers teaming up with any professional medical care provider, to research us--the PA community. So by arming themselves with accurate, insightfully updated information of our proven and solid quality legacy along with our past competent track record our profession has shown through the last five decades, they would come to a better understanding as to who we are rather than blindly accepting biased and skewed information that so many times has been reported w/o any real fact checking behind the false narrative or stories created about the PA profession.
It is no secret that America is deeply divided today, from a political perspective, from a social perspective and economic perspective and even a spiritual perspective. How utterly divisive this introduction and continuation of “Cancel Culture” is creeping up in the healthcare industry too.
View under this light, this was and is sadly a deplorable moment & stance the AMA took when the PA profession was targeted unfairly in their article, “Stop the Scope of Practice Creep”. This action perpetuates ignorance and biases outside the medical community, thus, fueling the fires of distrust in the patient-community. As if we need more distrust and a very elitist medica group of providers in an already very fragmented industry..
