Exploring Physician Assistant Entrustable Professional Activities, Integration, and Role Satisfaction Within Academic Hospitals in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Exploring EPA-PA Integration, and Role Satisfaction Within An Ontario Academic Hospitals
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5203/jcanpa.v4i9.932Keywords:
academic teaching, PA role integration, PA satisfaction, EPA, Entrustable Professional Activity, CanMEDS-PAAbstract
Physician Assistants (PAs) have been integrated across academic teaching hospitals in Hamilton since 2010. A survey was administered to practicing PAs at Hamilton Health Sciences Centre (HHSC) or St. Joseph’s Healthcare (SJH) to explore PA role integration and PA satisfaction in working at an academic hospital. The 22 PA respondents reported a considerable amount of autonomy of 76% (with 100% being full autonomy). The PAs felt their respective training programs prepared them for the workforce. It is evident that PAs integrate well into the healthcare system; many are mentoring medical students, and all have excellent relationships with their supervising physician(s) and co-workers. However, many PAs expressed feelings of burnout, lack of compensation, and paucity of PA mentorship. Areas of improvement include increasing PA mentorship, recruiting more PAs, and integrating more specialized clinical experience into PA programs.
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