“Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.” Jules Renard (1864 - 1910)

I have sent out this short quote as a reminder to the small group of PAs who may take umbrage with the recent successes of the NP profession. It all goes back to an article I wrote for Advance for PAs which is archived at Advance where the topic was Apathy, the malignancy of the profession. Whenever people or professionals from any group become so dependent on their organizations to do all of the work, it creates Apathy or Laziness. It's like posting an area in sub-freezing weather, as you sit down, try to keep warm, slowly fall asleep and just never awaken from the freeze induced coma that leads to death.

Apathy or laziness on any front has the ability to stop all progress and to lull a profession to death or a situation that resembles death. Ultimately it leads to failure. Failure to be recognized by other professions, by patients, by movie producers (as we saw this week), by administrators, by physicians, by our own families and sometimes by ourselves. We awaken one day to comments on forums or newsletters or newspapers and national magazines to discover we are merely assistants and a new job description has been applied to us. We see the errors on this assumption when we read postings concerning "physician's assistants." How long will you wait before awakening to the fact that this is slowly killing us? As Dave mentioned there are brilliant PA Administrators and leaders who disagree and who are satisfied on their level of intellect. These people have the intellect, have been past AAPA leaders, presidents, and educators therefore I do not disagree with their comments which are always rational but we have 75-80% of a profession that is crying out for change and the next step is to poll the profession and develop accurate statistics. As you see, many of us take this seriously.

Looking at the quote we see the punishment for laziness but there is also comment on the success of others. The Nurse Practitioner profession formed a strong foundation and became dedicated to building, placing bricks close together and uniting personalities that were indeed different but developing a focus on the growth of that building or the NP profession. They were dedicated, worked as a team, shared ideas, fought the AMA and any organization that tried to define their role and how it was to be played out in the future. They never became satisfied with the status quo and endeavored to reach a pinnacle of education, the Doctorate degree to prove their commitment. They paid their dues to the groups that were working toward the same goals, they did research on the challenges of health care in the 21st century, discovered that there were gaps in the delivery of health care, created a vehicle called retail health care clinics which are and have met the needs of many patients, they have strived for independence and have won it in 16 states, they have delivered quality health care and when they realized that their training may have been weak in certain specialty areas they attended to proper conferences, courses, review sites and reeducated , learned additional materials and they will be able to meet the needs of the 31 million people that enter the system.

Can PAs accomplish this also? Many have; they gained higher degrees, sought greater education, did residencies and are prepared but alas not all have and we are still burdened by an archaic name placed upon us by another profession and have not demanded that we change it. Am I speaking rebellion by saying "demand?" That's what it is going to take and there are leaders waiting silently or at least not boisterously, who will move this profession in a different direction if it does not see the mandate itself.  I am excited and delighted to see the successes of NPs because their successes can be ours. They have already paved roads and we share the exact same history of birth concerning our profession. Rejoice in their success and accomplishments and then ask why, why can't we do likewise, why can we not share in the responsibilities at a greater level, why are we afraid of the comments of some AMA leadership, why do we need to support groups who do not support our expertise, why will we allow ourselves the luxury of sitting on a rocking chair and falling asleep? It's time to arise from our sleep, our laziness and our apathy and awaken to a new dawn of passion, hope and futuristic ideas that will create HOPE. We need this and we need every PA to understand the importance of changing a ridiculous ideology that has been attached to our name over the past ten years and to say it's time for a change, it’s time for a polling of the PA profession on this issue.



Robert M. Blumm has received national recognition as a distinguished fellow of the American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA). He is the past president of the Association of Plastic Surgery Physician Assistants, and was past-president of the American Association of Surgical Physician Assistants, past president of the American College of Clinicians and NYSSPA, as well as Chairman of the Surgical Congress of the AAPA. In addition, Bob received the John Kirklin MD Award for Professional Excellence from the American Association of Surgical Physician Assistants. Along with his associate, Dr. Acker, Bob was the first recipient of the AAPA PAragon Physician-PA Partnership Award.  He has been a contributing author of three textbooks, written 150 plus articles and is a sought out conference speaker throughout the United States.

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