Physician Assistants in Canada: A 'New Breed' With An Old Name
The Kingston Whig Standard newspaper touts Canadian physician assistants as "a new breed of health professional."
Two long-term care facilities, one in the downtown, the other in Kingston's west end, have gone from rags to riches in the last few months, thanks to some exciting "out of the box" thinking by the medical profession, university educators and the health ministry.
Doctors specializing in family medicine at Queen's University are spending four-month rotations at Providence Manor, where they give one-on-one care to residents under the supervision of the manor's on-site physician. At Trillium Centre on Edgar Street, two "physician assistants," a new breed of health professional being introduced in Ontario, are spending five days a week attending to the medical needs of residents. The PAs are also supervised by the centre's physicians.
One question: didn't anyone tell PA pioneers in Canada, Australia and other countries experimenting with the PA concept not to use the word assistant? Even many staunch opponents of a name change for the PA profession in the United States concede that assistant is an innacurate and misleading word and was an unfortunate early choice for the profession's name.
The word assistant results in encourages assumptions such as this:
Nurse practitioners are a close cousin of physician assistants but have more independence. They can hang out their own shingle if they want to, though most work in teams. By comparison, everything a physician assistant does must be approved by a doctor.
Of course mere assistants must have physicians looking over their shoulders approving everything they do.
Why are the new breeds of PAs making the same old mistake?