Implementing postgraduate training for physician assistants in emergency medicine at a major urban academic medical center

摘要

To the Editor,The Affordable Healthcare Act intends to provide basic medical services to all Americans and must do so at minimal cost of implementation and over a relatively short period. The reality that it takes the better part of a decade to develop a physician through medical school and postgraduate training, along with the current physician shortage in the United States, requires us to look outside of this traditional pool of providers to meet the needs of the expected number of new patients [1]. It has become apparent that successful implementation of the Affordable Healthcare Act will depend on the addition of a large number of midlevel medical providers to the workforce and will likely require increasing the scope of practice and clinical acumen of these providers to keep pace with the needs of the multitude of new patients. As the market changes, physician assistants (PAs) will work more and more in specialties requiring more specific critical thinking and clinical decision making as well as more advanced procedural skills, than what PA graduate education prepares them for.