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| Reality #4- Uniting the PA Profession for the Future Decades |
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by Bob Blumm, MA, PA-C, DFAAPA - June 25, 2010
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Last in a series by Bob Blumm, MA, PA-C, DFAAPA
The future…what a glorious place in which to envision our profession. We know our roots and what we have accomplished in forty-five years. But will we be content with our achievements or will we strive to surpass our dreams and create new realities? I love this profession and have dedicated my adult life to providing medical care as a PA. I am proud of the many accomplishments that have been made and the scores of PAs that have cut paths in a wilderness to make our profession stronger, to make the PA one of the solutions to health care in the United States as well as in the world. The profession is at the crossroad: there is the danger of following the path of stagnation. There is the potential for a powerful overflow of new ideologies and dreams for the PAs of this last decade and those in the decades to follow. What will we bequeath to these individuals that will add to the momentum of the past and make us a stronger profession for the future?
The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. James Baldwin (1924 - 1987)
As an eager and young profession, we are sometimes accused of being restless and leaderless. May we never become so deaf that we fail to hear the sound of the trumpet? Historically, a trumpet call attracted the attention of the people or the armies and alerted them to the next challenge. As a profession, we need to have trumpeters; we also need to have ears to hear. Some of these trumpeters have been labeled as renegades or troublemakers as their thoughts ran contrary to what some perceived as sound judgment. History can provide us with hundreds of illustrations that totally trash this indictment. Some leaders in the profession seem to have fashioned belligerence, honed it as an art. This attitude can delay the inevitable. It can act as a stumbling block to the stepping stones of future growth and success. Leaders will stand on either side of an imaginary line and accuse the “other group” of this cardinal sin, but it is the profession and its members that need to provide input and test the waters of logic. The reality of new ideas and those who profess them is problematic in that “the old guard leadership” considers them to be bothersome as they do not reflect accepted, established ideologies and can rock the boat. However, the pursuit of new ideas is a necessary action for momentum within organizations and cultures. The pursuits of these ideas need to be tempered with careful, intelligent and thoughtful that consider the consequences that these actions may have on the organization, culture or profession. This is why we have debate and why we call for survey sand polling of the profession when needed as this is necessary to reaching a consensus and a plan of action.
Members of professions and organizations will sometimes have dissenting opinions. All members are entitled by dint of their membership and affiliation to have a forum to discuss these opinions in an intelligent, structured and non-threatening atmosphere. This atmosphere can be at a gathering of the profession or association or can be through the written word. Regardless of the mode of communication, this is not only a privilege of membership but a necessity for further growth. We live in a democracy which demonstrates its ideals through debate in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate. If we are to continue as a strong profession, we need to follow the ideals of our democracy and allow cohesiveness and unity to triumph because of our ideas not in spite of them. We need to put aside our personal thoughts and ideologies that have been written in the concrete of our minds and communicate openly and thoughtfully concerning the profession that we love. This is not about turf wars and infallibility but about freedom and the desire to become all that we are meant to achieve. In the College Blue Book, a resource tool for college freshmen, D’Angelo says, “Never let your persistence and your passion turn into stubbornness and ignorance.” Ten years ago I wrote, “At some point we must become aware of our profession’s strengths and weaknesses. At some point we need to set an agenda with humility and an open mind, keeping our mission statement before us and deferring to one another for the sake of our future. I believe that we are presently living in that time.” Strange as it may seem, Solomon was correct;”There is nothing new under the sun.” Nothing has changed and this philosophy is omnipresent.
We as a profession have a memorable history of accepting challenges and proving that we are equal to them. Our greatest strength lies in our unity and our commitment to our patients coupled with education, research, a desire to search for avenues of thought and approaches to healing as well as a hope that is enduring for our future. We are living in a moment of history that will catapult us into a more secure and more definitive role in healthcare. We are also living in an era where, according to surveys, 80% of the profession desires us to look into the feasibility of changing our name to one that more adequately defines who we are and what we do. There are aspects of quality care that can never be modified or lessened for the purpose of decreasing the bottom line and therefore short changing America of its entitled health care. We need to maintain those standards and be diligent to ever increase them in the future. We also have the responsibility to clearly represent our ability to our patients by having them recognize that we are not mere assistants who perform scut work and rudimentary tasks but, rather, we are true associates who deliver the highest standard of health care. We need to present ourselves and enhance our image by our name and by our skill and commitment. Our foundation of knowledge should only expand as new principles of thought present themselves. We need to maintain our standards of health delivery and promote them to patients, to administrators, to legislators and the medical community as a whole. The sleeping giant has awakened; the PA profession remains enthusiastic, healthy and prepared to take on the new responsibilities and burdens of a health care system that is ever expanding and is committed to meet all of the health care needs for all its citizens regardless of their social status or ability to pay. This is their entitlement and this is our responsibility as I understand it from taking the Hippocratic Oath.
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.
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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