Australian Medical Students Oppose Physician Assistants

The reality of the situation is, those same medical students; one, will not be training in the remote country side where they are planning to deploy those few PAs under the pilot program and two, much more importantly, those medical students once graduated, will not be working in those same Australian Outback remote country side locations as they do not pay as well as the employment opportunities in the larger metropolitan areas.  The fact is that most Australians want someone in their community from their own country.  Most remote practicianers in Australia are foriegn born and trained physicians.  In closing, I could not agree more with my fellow commentators.  Maybe the AMSA President should view this as a widening opportunity for the patients to receive health care, as apposed to waiting for an appointment to see one of the few practicianers currently available.

I don't see any real difference between the opposition of these Australian students and the opposition that PA's in the US faced in the early days of the profession.  Despite the now-proven contributions of PAs in American Medicine and the advances made in Canada, the UK and other areas of Europe, there will always be those who oppose the profession.  This is not due to any real concerns over quality of care, as this has already been disproven.  Rather, this is simply an issue of protecting one's turf.  In this case, the Australian students fear a more uncertain future if PAs were to added to the mix.  

Unfortunately, the attitude of Australian medical students is far more pervasive than what may be realized.  The fact that what medical students think is finally being given the clout that it deserves, which is very insignificant, is certainly unsettling to individuals that have been taught and reinforced that what they think is very important for mankind despite its merit.  These are mostly 20 something children with a very narrow and shallow depth of life experience.  Most are far from mature, and are often born of privilege.  Typically, they only have a set of fixed false beliefs ingrained by parents, to fall back on to justify their 'ideals'.  Be patient, give them ten years of real tangible experience out in the real world, and they will start to understand what health and care is truly about.    

Although, I do appreciate the AMSA President's concern for lack of clinical preceptorship sites,  I do not believe that additional PA's will 'compromise the quality of medical student training'.  The fact is, the US claim that they have a lack of sites as well.  But remember that while Physician Assistants do require clinical sites for training during their 2-3 year schooling, they are not mandated to obtain residency program training after they graduate, like medical students.  Also, yes it is true that the shortage of all kinds of healthcare workers will be exponential for our global society, however, I want to emphasize that the Physician Assistant model was not invented by Dr. Stead from Duke University in the early 70's to substitute the physician workforce, as the AMSA President suggests.  In the US, we call it a collaborative process of healthcare delivery - "Physician - PA Team".

What goes around, comes around.