Dear editor,
I’m one of several physician assistants living in British Columbia continuing to be shut out of acceptance on the healthcare team, unemployed and, on the sidelines, while the BC Ministry of Health ignores our profession and the added value we could immediately bring to healthcare and extend to the citizens of this province, currently not receiving any care.
For decades this has been going on due to the partisan nature of this province’s health ministry. It has nothing to do with rank-and-file health professionals. Rather, it has everything to do with bureaucrats who control health policy and narrative allowing one profession to proffer over others. Recently, the minister of health announced the hiring of foreign associate physicians, along with a new remuneration package for family practice physicians. There is no mention of PAs, who are already here on the ground and ready to work. Why? Unacceptable.
So, for PAs who after completion of their military service, or those PAs who upon graduating from institutions across Canada and who call B.C. home, this is plainly denial of employment. It discriminates and robs us of our ability to assist in contributing to the safe delivery of healthcare to all citizens of B.C.
Physician assistants have more than proven their worth for several decades in Canada. However, here we continue to be shut out for partisan political reasons. I, along with many others, were good enough to serve in uniform overseas and domestically alongside physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners and many other healthcare professions, but once our military service is over the PA profession isn’t worthy of the same privilege of contributing to healthcare delivery in B.C.
Trevor Stone,
Comox