Associate Physician

[PACali]

https://assistantphysicianassociation.com/

Looks like associate physician might be coming to your town. Basically physician without a residency, which is very close in time to a PA with residency.  Some states call it Assistant Physician, but Associate Physician in Utah and Virginia. 

Now, just imagine we change our title to Physician Associate:

Hi I am PAcali, Physician Associate to the Associate Physician

Patient.....

 

Edited December 22, 2020 by PACali

[CAAdmission]

For decades I have heard physicians tell me that they are superior in pretty much every respect due to the extensive experience that they obtain in residency.

Then they cut the number of hours a resident was allowed to work in a week and failed to extend the length of the residencies, resulting in much less patient contact. 

Now we have practitioners that were not good enough to earn a residency slot out there? What is their advantage? With so much of med school oriented toward basic science, most physicians in training count on gaining much needed hands-on experience during their residency. Eliminate that and you have people that might be book smart but don't know which end of the needle is the pointy one. 

[TDIowa]

Quote

Under The Best Conditions 25,110 Residency Applicants Will Do Not Get Placed In A Residency Program Per Year.

Loved this quote. Guess they teach proof reading in a residency. Thus the grammar error

[DizzyJ]

Quote

"An assistant physician shall clearly identify himself or herself as an assistant physician and shall be permitted to use the terms "doctor", "Dr.", or "doc"."

So, they can clearly identify they are assistant physicians AND be called doctor, but a PA, with a doctorate, doing the same thing would cause to much confusion?

[PA-C]

Let’s say we are able to change our title to MCP and have a DMS degree....

would it be: 1.) LEGAL and 2.) APPROPRIATE to walk into an exam room and say “Hello, I’m Dr. XYZ, one of the Medical Care Practitioners.” 
 

In that circumstance, you would be calling yourself “Dr.” because you earned a doctoral degree related to the work you are performing, but clearly state the type of Dr. you are by identifying yourself as a MCP.

If an “associate physician“ who didn’t complete residency is able to call themself Dr. because they completed a doctoral program, shouldn’t the same be true for us? 
 

I feel like it’s time for PAs (hopefully soon to be MCPs) start “taking what’s ours,” so to speak, and calling attention to the fact that we are also highly trained doctoral degree providers and stop worrying about bruising our physician colleagues’ egos. 
 

Thoughts?
 

 

[PACali]

1 hour ago, PA-C said:

Let’s say we are able to change our title to MCP and have a DMS degree....

would it be: 1.) LEGAL and 2.) APPROPRIATE to walk into an exam room and say “Hello, I’m Dr. XYZ, one of the Medical Care Practitioners.” 
 

In that circumstance, you would be calling yourself “Dr.” because you earned a doctoral degree related to the work you are performing, but clearly state the type of Dr. you are by identifying yourself as a MCP.

If an “associate physician“ who didn’t complete residency is able to call themself Dr. because they completed a doctoral program, shouldn’t the same be true for us? 
 

I feel like it’s time for PAs (hopefully soon to be MCPs) start “taking what’s ours,” so to speak, and calling attention to the fact that we are also highly trained doctoral degree providers and stop worrying about bruising our physician colleagues’ egos. 
 

Thoughts?
 

 

You hit the point. That is why I support MCP. It opens a lot of door and future possibilities, it integrates well with a doctorate degree. It makes sense for the patients. 

Let's not forget, there are 3 years medical school right now and they could be associate physicians.  At the same time there are PA programs that are between 32 to 36 months, but we can only be Physician's associate. 

[Sensa23]

3 hours ago, PACali said:

You hit the point. That is why I support MCP. It opens a lot of door and future possibilities, it integrates well with a doctorate degree. It makes sense for the patients. 

Let's not forget, there are 3 years medical school right now and they could be associate physicians.  At the same time there are PA programs that are between 32 to 36 months, but we can only be Physician's associate. 

Also let us not forget there are PA programs that are fully integrated within MD & DO schools, and in some cases share the exact same didactic training for 2 years as their doctorate classmates. Interestingly enough, as was the case with my own cohort and many others before it, that our matriculation statistics were nearly identical. Shouldn't also be a surprise that even after having soon-to-be physicians interact directly with us on a daily basis some were still confused on basic tenets of what PA's do and can do. It's about time we get a title that more accurately reflects the medical knowledge, professionalism and level of care that PA's possess. God speed.

Also fun fact: My MPH took me 45 credit hours. My MPAS took me 126 credit hours. It's a travesty we're getting stomped on nationally by NPs that more often than not only do 30-40 credit hrs of coursework and much less clinical hours.

[MediMike]

3 minutes ago, Sensa23 said:

Also let us not forget there are PA programs that are fully integrated within MD & DO schools, and in some cases share the exact same didactic training for 2 years as their doctorate classmates. Interestingly enough, as was the case with my own cohort and many others before it, that our matriculation statistics were nearly identical. Shouldn't also be a surprise that even after having soon-to-be physicians interact directly with us on a daily basis some were still confused on basic tenets of what PA's do and can do. It's about time we get a title that more accurately reflects the medical knowledge, professionalism and level of care that PA's possess. God speed.

Also fun fact: My MPH took me 45 credit hours. My MPAS took me 126 credit hours. It's a travesty we're getting stomped on nationally by NPs that more often than not only do 30-40 credit hrs of coursework and much less clinical hours.

Could you share your alma mater?

[PractitionerAwesome]

Not to mention the >100 existing medical groups that already use "Physician Associates" in their names:

https://npidb.org/npi-lookup/?state=&fname=&lname=&sound=0&search="physician+associate"#main

I have a feeling that those ~1000 Physicians aren't just going to be like: Well the PAs changed their name, I respect their decision, time to change our medical groups names....Nope, they're going to combine with the "Physicians for Patient Protection" bunch and get the AMA to fight it and villainize PAs.

We need to just let Physicians have the "Physician" title. PAs are a distinct profession. Let's put our big boy and big girl pants on and introduce ourselves like one.

Edited December 23, 2020 by scotshy

[vb315]

"COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE AND SUPERVISORY AGREEMENTS: Current law authorizes physicians to enter into a collaborative practice agreement with 3 advanced practice registered nurses (APRN) and 3 assistant physicians, and a supervising agreement with 3 licensed physician assistants. This act authorizes physicians to enter into a collaborative practice agreement or a supervising agreement with 6 APRNs, assistant physicians, licensed physician assistants, or any combination thereof."


Copied from the "States" section of the website that PACali linked. It's a shame that the legislation still lists our collaboration with physician colleagues as "supervisory" but correctly calls it "collaboration" for NPs and these APs.

[WeBuyAndSellJunk]

The full expansion of the Associate/Assistant Physician will kill PA schools. Who in their right mind would enter in to a program that requires close to the same amount of time/effort input to become a PA instead of an Assistant Physician (AP)? The AP is likely to still have more authority, to be paid, at least, equivalently to the PA, and will/could seemingly have the opportunity to stay as an AP or continue to search for a residency slot. If physicians are looking to kill us off, this is the silver bullet. In fact, I would fully support it if they would grandfather us PAs all in as APs and allow us to apply for residency slots too. Good riddance to our political strife. We are all suddenly on the "same team". 

Edited December 28, 2020 by WeBuyAndSellJunk

[PA-C]

1 hour ago, WeBuyAndSellJunk said:

The full expansion of the Associate/Assistant Physician will kill PA schools. Who in their right mind would enter in to a program that requires close to the same amount of time/effort input to become a PA instead of an Assistant Physician (AP)? The AP is likely to still have more authority, to be paid, at least, equivalently to the PA, and will/could seemingly have the opportunity to stay as an AP or continue to search for a residency slot. If physicians are looking to kill us off, this is the silver bullet. In fact, I would fully support it if they would grandfather us PAs all in as APs and allow us to apply for residency slots too. Good riddance to our political strife. We are all suddenly on the "same team". 

One of my MD professors in PA school predicted something like this would happen. If they grandfathered us in it would certainly decrease the “physician shortage” they all like to talk about. Maybe we should change our name to Physician Associate after all; it would make it easier to grandfather us lol.

Does anyone realistically think this is something the AAPA can approach the AMA (or other legal entities) about to see if it might be an option? 

Edited December 28, 2020 by PA-C

[ventana]

1 hour ago, PA-C said:

One of my MD professors in PA school predicted something like this would happen. If they grandfathered us in it would certainly decrease the “physician shortage” they all like to talk about. Maybe we should change our name to Physician Associate after all; it would make it easier to grandfather us lol.

Does anyone realistically think this is something the AAPA can approach the AMA (or other legal entities) about to see if it might be an option? 

Nope never happen due to WHO standards for medical college. AMA would oppose.  They have manufactured the physician shortage to keep salaries high.  Eliminating the shortage would lower wages and AMA would oppose this.   To much greed.  

[PA-C]

15 hours ago, ventana said:

Nope never happen due to WHO standards for medical college. AMA would oppose.  They have manufactured the physician shortage to keep salaries high.  Eliminating the shortage would lower wages and AMA would oppose this.   To much greed.  

Makes sense. It’s always about the money and politics of it all when it comes down to it. Greedy monetarily and ego-wise

[ventana]

^^  yup - hidden behind patient safety and the like - I feel bad for the docs that care, that are great, cause the AMA and all the other national agencies are just money grubbing policy 

 

[TexasPA28]

On 12/28/2020 at 5:49 PM, ventana said:

Nope never happen due to WHO standards for medical college. AMA would oppose.  They have manufactured the physician shortage to keep salaries high.  Eliminating the shortage would lower wages and AMA would oppose this.   To much greed.  

If the AMA is pulling all the strings then why did they allow over 50 new med schools to be built in the last 10 years?

 

[ventana]

2 hours ago, TexasPA28 said:

If the AMA is pulling all the strings then why did they allow over 50 new med schools to be built in the last 10 years?

 

because they realized that PA and NP were taking over and that they had underpredicted the boomer medical needs

the single biggest threat to NP and PA is a rapid expansion of MD/DO

it would kill both profession with in a decade....