 Provided by Clinician 1
Over the last few years, there have been changes that have snuck up on us.
Remember when you used to look forward to getting your state newsletter in the mail because you wanted to see how far your new profession had progressed over the last month? I am not sure any state still sends out their newsletter by paper mail? Or maybe you remember how it was to be the first PA or NP anyone had personally met or had ever been treated by? Those days, thankfully are almost behind us. Or can you still remember being taken out by a pharmaceutical rep for dinner because he or she knew you were a high prescriber of his product? Those days are surely gone. Can you also remember the medical society saying they “would ABORT your profession by any means possible”? The NY State Medical Society said that about PAs in NY for a number of years. They said similar things about NPs. Now they may not like us, but they know we are here for good. We have, much to their chagrin become a force to be reckoned with.
Many of us “old timers” are in a generation that will fondly remember the good old days, because in so many ways, they really were the good old days. I remember marching with 500 other people to achieve PA practice in a neighboring state. PAs were getting arrested there just for practicing. Remember the totally heady feeling we all had the day we were allowed to first write prescriptions with our own names on them? The feeling was magical. What will compare with that in the future?
Even going to a state conference and having 50 booths to walk by, each company trying to give you nice pens, office clocks, even on occasion pocket otoscopes and always books and more books. Without saying that this was a good or bad way to market and speaking for myself this made me feel my new profession counted. You can bet many of us said, “if you are leaving those things for the doctors, be sure to leave me one also”. I remember the days pharmaceutical reps would not call on NPs or PAs. Ultimately those pharmaceutical booths at the conference did something else, something you may have overlooked. They helped finance many a state NP and PA organization. Without that specific money it might have taken many more years to achieve what we did. This was considerable money to our new organizations that gave both professions war chests to hire lobbyists. For better or worse, those days also have become memories. In the future, organizations will have less and less money coming in from non dues revenue. If you believe in your profession, you will be asked to contribute more to prove it.
Surely the NPs and PAs that remember the days of above are moving on. If not by retiring, by letting the younger generation take more responsibility for the professions. For many of us, becoming an NP or PA was the ultimate way to show what we could do. The fact that we had the guts to think that we could do what up until then only physicians did, was the ultimate in chutzpah. To even think our professions would be around long enough to matter was a risk. But, we all believed. We also all went out and proved not only ourselves, but our professions. I think a good number of us got some of our self esteem by changing medicine and marveling at the fact that it appeared we had really shifted people’s thinking. Many of us still do.
I pray that the new generation of leaders stepping forward feels the need to keep changing things. I can only hope they too feel the momentum swinging our way on some new issue that they lobby for. Only hope that they too feel the magic of doing some procedure, or signing some document or realizing a professional dream by watching it come true. Maybe my wish will come when only the “older” PAs remember being called an “assistant”. Maybe things will change so much in the future and these fond memories will continue unabated for our two great professions? That would be so great.
Remember, watching your profession change for the better and you having a part in that change is the most wonderful memories you can have.
Dave has been a PA, and later NP, leader for thirty years. He strongly believes that NPs and PAs must work together to insure a better future for both professions. Most recently Dave has been busy launching another dream; Clinician 1, the first internet community for PAs and NPs. In October 2008, Dave was honored by the New Jersey State society of PAs with its “Lifetime Achievement Award”.
The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.
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