Patient Safety: Physician Assistant Responsibilities and Opportunities

Working in a team relationship with physicians, PAs today provide over 290 million patient visits per year. PAs work in all health care settings and specialties where physicians normally provide care. PAs are in a critical position to help promote patient safety and the quality of physician services. The American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAP), the only national professional organization for PAs, wishes to raise the visibility of patient safety and quality of care concerns in the profession generally and better enable PAs in all settings to become more active and accountable participants in patient safety and quality improvement processes. To these ends, AAPA proposes to convene an advisory committee of national leaders in patient safety and quality improvement to identify five to eight patient safety practices in which PAs can participate or lead that would advance patient safety and the quality of care in measurable ways. A case-based, modular conference CME program will be created and presented at the AAPA annual conference as well as eight to ten state and specialty PA organizations at their annual CME conferences. AAPA expects to reach over 3,000 PAs through this conference series program. An article summarizing the results of the consensus meeting and the proceedings of the conference program will be prepared and published in the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants, with a circulation of over 62,000 PAs nationally and internationally. The information from the lecture series and the article also will be posted on the AAPA Web site, which has over 5 million hits per month. The Principal Investigator for the project will be Stephen Crane, PhD, EVP/CEO of the AAPA and formerly vice president of the Association for Health Services Research. The AAPA Quality Care Committee will be responsible for the content of this project. Staffing for the advisory committee and QCC meetings, lecture presentations, publications and Web site material will be provided through the AAPA. Public Description: The Patient Safety: Physician Assistant Responsibilities and Opportunities conference series will provide PAs with the knowledge and skills to implement effective system strategies to improve patient safety appropriate to their particular patient care setting, and thus contribute to improvements in the overall quality of health care provided by PAs and those patient care professionals with whom they work.

Working in a team relationship with physicians, PAs today provide over 290 million patient visits per year. PAs work in all health care settings and specialties where physicians normally provide care. PAs are in a critical position to help promote patient safety and the quality of physician services. The American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAP), the only national professional organization for PAs, wishes to raise the visibility of patient safety and quality of care concerns in the profession generally and better enable PAs in all settings to become more active and accountable participants in patient safety and quality improvement processes. To these ends, AAPA proposes to convene an advisory committee of national leaders in patient safety and quality improvement to identify five to eight patient safety practices in which PAs can participate or lead that would advance patient safety and the quality of care in measurable ways. A case-based, modular conference CME program will be created and presented at the AAPA annual conference as well as eight to ten state and specialty PA organizations at their annual CME conferences. AAPA expects to reach over 3,000 PAs through this conference series program. An article summarizing the results of the consensus meeting and the proceedings of the conference program will be prepared and published in the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants, with a circulation of over 62,000 PAs nationally and internationally. The information from the lecture series and the article also will be posted on the AAPA Web site, which has over 5 million hits per month. The Principal Investigator for the project will be Stephen Crane, PhD, EVP/CEO of the AAPA and formerly vice president of the Association for Health Services Research. The AAPA Quality Care Committee will be responsible for the content of this project. Staffing for the advisory committee and QCC meetings, lecture presentations, publications and Web site material will be provided through the AAPA. Public Description: The Patient Safety: Physician Assistant Responsibilities and Opportunities conference series will provide PAs with the knowledge and skills to implement effective system strategies to improve patient safety appropriate to their particular patient care setting, and thus contribute to improvements in the overall quality of health care provided by PAs and those patient care professionals with whom they work.