Joining Forces As Leadership Teams to Illicit Change

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Joining forces, as a leadership team, to change our perception nationwide.

Bob Blumm, MA, PA-C, DFAAPA

July 19, 2013

History has proven that the greatest accomplishment in our nation and in countries across the globe have their foundation in leadership teams joining coalitions to create a stability otherwise unachievable. Individuals may become part of a spotlight but in reality, it is the team of proactive people who join forces to make change. Look behind every successful man and you will find a supportive woman. Look behind every team that wins a trophy and you will discover a coach, look behind successful organizational accomplishment and you will see multiple groups sharing their identities and working as one, as a team. The PA universe has its problems and they resurface and appear like waves on the ocean floor but it is the individuals that offer their support and encouragement, that join coalitions and work together whose assistance becomes the foundation for change and success.

The PAFT( PAs for Tomorrow) exists to create this change but has developed the realization that it is by joining forces with other specialty groups that represent the profession that we can achieve this goal. PAFT is a young organization with a rich membership and advisers and a board who are pledged to create an epiphany. We seek group memberships as well as personal memberships so that our number can make a difference and give us a more profound voice in PA political and legislative ambitions.

Rising to a level of interdependent thinking can be challenging and difficult we have discover early, the need to go beyond ourselves and join other groups who have issues that are creating hardship and taking the risks of sharing the burden and lending support to one another. Our goal is to discover and share our enthusiasm and our gifts to benefit one another and to propel the profession to new heights. There are various leadership techniques that formulate plans and goals and among the first steps is to create a team from among the existing teams, a cabinet of specialists who care from the bottom of their hearts and perform their tasks without financial gain.

The PAFT desires to put the team first and be action oriented, with an agreed upon plan. If psychiatric PAs in a given state are being crippled by laws that will not enable them to heal those with needs in the state, then our common goal is to start a campaign and to help all psychiatric PAs. If we are being challenged by self absorbed giants such as the AMA who desire to remove our rights from invasive procedures to lesser standards of care, then we need to band with every specialty group to achieve change. We can do so as the PAFT as well as specialty groups.

We need to communicate freely and openly with facts not opinions so that we cannot be challenged by existing laws. To be part of the solution we need to research the past and the present, define areas that can be changes and work as a team to affect the changes. We need to ask the proper questions and phrase them in a manner that we can all understand and commit to. Most problems require rational, out of the box solutions and this is created with diversity. We must commit to integrity and prove by our example that we are not radicals with a wish list but professionals who are willing to commit to excellence in our decisions.

As a board we encourage independent thinking and this can create controversy among leaders with different opinions but it is only in agreeing to disagreeing and in remembering our fallibility that we can come to successful communications that result in a new goal and a new solution. I dream of a PAFT that encourages all specialties and all PAs to become knowledgeable about issues, offer input, create research that makes our points clear and works with the appropriate state or specialty leadership in allowing them to be spokesmen and women with the support of a group dedicated to our being PAs for Tomorrow, a new and improved medical and surgical clinician who has left the playpen and has joined the state and national coalitions in being a part of every national incentive that effects PAs. One cannot say they represent all PAs everywhere but need to prove it with a humility and desire to grow, expand and be all inclusive. Martin Luther King said; “I have a Dream.” This is my shared dream with others to bring our profession forward without mandates and strife.

Yours for Today and Tomorrow,

Bob Blumm, MA, PA-C, DFAAPA

Vice President, PAFT

 

Robert M. Blumm, MA, PA-C, DFAAPA

National PA Consultant, Activist and Conference Speaker

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[TD=width: 100%]The brave person thinks of themselves last of all.

 

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