Professional service

Volunteering with physician assistant professional organizations

PA professional organizations at the national, state, and institutional levels rely extensively on volunteer support to carry out their missions. Although our national organizations, such as the American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA), the PA Foundation (PAF), the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA) Foundation, and the Physician Assistant Education Association (PAEA) each have a small number of full-time staff who work alongside volunteers, most other PA-related professional organizations rely almost exclusively on volunteers to complete the needed work. Without volunteers, the costs of providing services, lobbying legislators, organizing continuing medical education (CME) events, and so on would be prohibitive. In addition, having PAs direct these activities helps ensure that the profession is being effectively represented and that the services provided by the professional organizations are actually meeting the needs of PAs.

The minimum level at which each PA should serve the profession is by joining our national and state professional associations. Unfortunately, although the state and federal laws governing PA practice in most states are reasonably favorable, there are no guarantees that they will remain so. Many states have seen legislation proposed by other professions that would attempt to restrict PA practice in one way or another. Some of these legislative proposals have been so restrictive that they would have effectively made it impossible for PAs to practice at all in certain specialties. Other times, well-meaning politicians have proposed new legislation that inadvertently excludes PAs from performing an activity allowed for doctors and nurse practitioners. Sometimes regulatory bodies fail to include PAs as authorized providers in the regulations that govern medical practice nationally or at the state level. In 2013, for example, the author of the federal regulations on durable medical equipment (DME) excluded PAs from the list of providers who could authorize DME such as walkers and crutches for patients with TRICARE insurance, meaning PAs were unable to write prescriptions for these items for members of the armed services and their families! The only way to protect the legislative gains the profession has made is to continuously monitor proposed legislation and regulations in each state and on the federal level. Monitoring legislation and regulations in real time requires money to hire either staff or a lobbying organization. Most clinical PAs have neither the time nor the expertise to monitor legislation and regulations on their own. Supporting your national and state professional organizations with your annual dues allows these organizations to have a stable funding stream with which they can develop services that benefit all PAs and allow you to continue your practice.

Beyond simply supporting your professional organizations with your membership funds, there are many opportunities to get involved with PA organizations on the state and national levels. State organizations need PAs to plan CME conferences, serve on the organization‘s board, represent the state in the AAPA House of Delegates, develop public relations strategies, monitor the finances of the organization, liaise with medical and nursing associations, run membership drives, advise student members, lobby on behalf of the profession, develop legislative strategies in conjunction with lawmakers, represent PAs to large employers across the state, and develop community service projects. The subcommittees that perform these duties are often looking for more people to assist them and are frequently very interested in having newly graduated PAs serve alongside more experienced PAs. Newly graduated PAs often have energy and exciting new ideas to share ( Fig. 60.1 ).

After you have a bit of experience in your specialty or have served at the state level, you may wish to begin serving at the national level. The AAPA and the PAF have a host of volunteer opportunities to serve on behalf of all PAs. The AAPA and the PAF need people to sit on scholarship committees; work to develop stronger relationships with the federal government; develop the annual AAPA conference; liaise to medical, specialty, and other health professions organizations; and raise money for philanthropic work. You might also consider working with a constituent organization of the AAPA. Constituent organizations within the AAPA are groups of PAs with unifying interests, such as particular specialties (e.g., psychiatry, nephrology), common characteristics (e.g., ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation), or specific interests (e.g., rural health, global health, administration, alternative medicine). Constituent organizations bring together PAs across the country to achieve common goals and to network. They may lobby for particular federal legislation or regulations. They often provide CME of specific interest to their members. They typically also provide support to their members facing particular challenges related to their specialty, cause, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. Specialty constituent organizations often serve as the representatives of PAs to their medical specialty organizations. For example, the president of the Society for Physician Assistants in Pediatrics (SPAP) attends the annual American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) meeting to speak on behalf of PAs and meet with AAP leadership regarding issues of mutual interest and concern to pediatricians and pediatric PAs. Volunteering on the national level provides exciting opportunities to meet new people and develop new leadership skills.