HOD AAPA

[TWR]

Did anyone attend the voting at HOD and if you did, what was decided.  Thanks

[rev ronin]

2 hours ago, TWR said:

Did anyone attend the voting at HOD and if you did, what was decided.  Thanks

Yes.

Erm. Lots of stuff was done on the consent agenda, lots of housekeeping updates.

Lots of fighting on how best to lower the standards for AAPA president-elect in order "provide a more diverse candidate pool"--i.e., to elect more non-white candidates. An interesting balance of interests between woke signaling and the corporation's best leadership interest.

Bylaws change to give retirees the vote. Failed barely to hit 2/3rds, reconsidered, passed. I heard more people I know incensed that this wasn't a slam dunk, given that students had been extended some voting privileges last year.

Big fight on how to remove the AAPA president-elect... err, I mean "board members or officers" with and without cause.  No one said her name, but the unceremonious dumping of Diane Bruessow (for unspecified reasons that quite possibly had more to do with her being too-LGBT friendly for the rest of the board to tolerate her as the face of the organization) clearly dominated the mind of the house.  I'm sure they'll do the same if any Pro-Life Christian got elected, too; can't rock the corporate boat. Referred, I think.

Yet another fight over whether to collect CO dues via AAPA's website, so that people who get to join one professional organization (or rather, pay one such bill) from their CME could join both AAPA and state orgs. Waaay too much whining and stated incompetence from AAPA leadership, some pushback from COs, too. Referred, tabled, or defeated, I forget.

Some tweaking of DEI stuff. In general, the house preferred to keep laundry lists, despite the DEI commission being against them. Whatever.

Supported removal of sexual orientation language in blood donation restrictions.

Supported waiting periods on guns, which I was surprised no one objected to. The veterans' caucus used to be a reliable bulwark against such nonsense.

Tweaked language regarding PAs in recovery from SUDs. The house actually made this one better vs. presented.

Reaffirmed what they believe to be abortion access. Problem is "reproductive healthcare" is not defined in the AAPA policies, so they're trying to weasel that without actually saying "we support killing unborn children up to birth."  I noted that Abortion Pill Reversal had been outlawed in Colorado, which was definitely reproductive healthcare, and so someone added "evidence-based" as an amendment. As if APR isn't evidence based? C'mon, people, ACOG may be a major sponsor of the conference, but kool-aid drinking is beneath us.

Oh, speaking of Kool-aid drinking, AAPA joins the list of other organizations supporting permanent sexual modification of minors under the name of "gender affirming care" Amendments to exclude minors from the blanket statement, or to instead encourage further study (that one was mine) were rejected.

There was more resistance to letting boys who present as girls from participating in girls' sports. An amendment trying to tie participation to the IOC rules received serious consideration, but I think the whole thing ended up getting referred or adopted--I can't remember which.

Big fight over whether to claim DMSc as the PA post-professional degree name. Lots of hand-wringing testimony: "But we haven't standardized the master's yet!" Well, no duh, Sherlock, that's why someone had the foresight to bring this up now. "Give the PAEA time to sort out what the entry level doctorate title will be!" No. The PAEA gives seats at the table to people who actually offer "doctorate of physician assistant practice" degrees, who should on no account be taken seriously.

Support for PA student maternity leave. I suggested that "surrogacy" be struck, as it's ethically problematic exploitation of women and not mentioned elsewhere in policy; that amendment was not adopted, and they ended up making the whole thing a bit more expansive in the end, IIRC.

Surprisingly intense fight over for-profit pre-PA coaching.

Washington tried to get podiatrists on the list of physicians with whom PAs could enter into supervisory of collaborative relationships, and that went over poorly overall, but the testimony from AAPA leadership demonstrated that the feedback WAPA had gotten from AAPA staff during last legislative session was factually wrong, and quite possibly cost Washington collaborative practice in 2023: The Podiatrists were on board to help us get collaboration in exchange for being named as collaborating physicians, and this year's resolution was rejected, in part, because AAPA policy encourages us to collaborate with anyone.

Some brouhaha over encouraging PA testing to have all the features like highlighting/strikeout that MCAT and other tests have, was eventually adopted IIRC.

Several other good, uncontroversial things, like trying to get Amazon to let PAs order medical supplies, PAs to continue gaining ground in substance abuse,

A feel-good (i.e., it really does nothing) sop to the student academy about wearable technology awareness, but at least there wasn't an extended-length story of personal tragedy from the floor about a button battery fatality like last year.

(re-checking notes...)

Oh, some fights over the nominating work group.

And, a motion to make conference site selection based on woke politics died in flames based on pragmatic matters: AAPA conference staff reported that if they left out all the not-too-big, not-too-small cities that had at least some protection for unborn lives, we would be restricted to TWO cities. And we already had contracts signed through 2030 that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to break. A list was given to the floor, and I didn't think to write everything down, but of the cities listed, Seattle and Denver were the only ones I know for sure are in solid blue states. I think Seattle was 2029.

There's probably more, but this is my opinionated report with commentary.

[Reality Check 2]

Once again, I hear absolutely NOTHING about how its members feel, how the idiotic name change has bombed, or how badly we are being beaten out of a career by NPs.................

Head firmly in sand (or an orifice) and completely tone deaf. 

And they continue to wonder why I don't give them money.

AAPA is worse than Congress.

[Mayamom]

Dear me.....

[rev ronin]

18 hours ago, Reality Check 2 said:

Once again, I hear absolutely NOTHING about how its members feel, how the idiotic name change has bombed, or how badly we are being beaten out of a career by NPs.................

I brought up the fact that some doctorates had "physician assistant" in the title and were out of step with the title change as a reason to support setting DMSc as the standard, but that didn't appear to sway anyone.

If enough people get involved and get sent as state delegates, it can make a difference.

For now, everyone in attendance seemed far more concerned about becoming more woke and housekeeping matters than advancing the profession, but again, what you have is ONE report from ONE guy who, although relatively invested in a few of the topics, did spend a good bit of the HOD working on homework.

[briansk]

Glad I stopped supporting this lunacy

[rev ronin]

5 hours ago, briansk said:

Glad I stopped supporting this lunacy

Don't be. They will define standards of professional practice against which you will be evaluated.