Getting Involved

by Eric Smith, MMS, PA-C
FAPA Secretary

In the hustle and bustle of the busy life of a physician assistant, it is easy to keep work goals very simple. Get up, go to work, take good care of your patients, keep your supervising physician happy in the clinic and/or hospital, and then go back home to your family. Yet there are opportunities for some of us that come up within the workplace that allow us to get closer to the physicians we work for and to get more involved with the things that they consider important in their professional lives. When those opportunities arise, we as PAs should seize them and make the most of them. I have a story to tell about how I happened to get a unique opportunity to do just that this past September.

I work in a family practice clinic for an osteopathic physician in the Clearwater area. I’m not sure about other parts of the state, but the DOs are quite politically active in the St. Petersburg/ Clearwater area. On September 13th, they held their annual PCOMS (Pinellas County Osteopathic Medical Society) Legislative Night at a Clearwater Beach hotel ballroom. This event had the most politically influential osteopathic doctors in the area as well as several key legislators and legislative candidates. I was the only PA in attendance (as I am a PCOMS member) and attended the event along with my supervising physician. It was a great experience to mingle and meet so many of these legislators alongside the doctor I work for in a way that clearly displays how PAs stand alongside their physicians in support of their causes. I did have a chance to meet (or see again in some cases) a few legislators/ legislative candidates at the state level, including Ed Hooper, Peter Nehr , Rick Kriseman, Gus Bilirakis, Charlie Justice and Leslie Waters just to name a few. There were many local county commissioner and judge candidates in attendance as well. Some of these legislators even expressed interest in our profession and I found myself explaining over and over again what a PA is, what we do, and how we are important to the healthcare arena in Florida. My supervising physician backed me up 100% along the way, adding how great the Physician/PA Team works and why it is vital to the future of medical care in our state. Some of these legislators, particularly Bilirakis, Kriseman, and Nehr, expressed interest in meeting with me at a later date to talk more with them.

There was an even greater advantage to this meeting though than meeting these legislators. I was able to mingle with other physicians in our area, all of which cordially treated me like one of their own. Most of these doctors I already knew from the hospital setting or from referrals. I was also able to have a lot of great conversations with some of them, including Lee Shettle (PCOMS President), Phillip Shettle (Immediate Past AOA President), and Anthony Ottavianni (FOMA President-Elect). ). I was very pleased to learn of Dr. Ottavianni's election to the FOMA (Florida Osteopathic Medical Association) Presidency. He has long been a big PA advocate as well as a colleague/friend to my supervising doc and myself. He and I spoke at length that night about many issues, particularly how physicians and PAs should be more aligned on issues rather than on opposite sides of legislation each year. He was thrilled with my idea to speak to FOMA in a brief presentation at one of the FOMA Board meetings next year and he even offered to come to one of our Board meetings next year as well to speak on behalf of FOMA to us. I felt very good after that meeting. In one evening social event, I felt like I was able to make some important connections that could help our profession’s relationship with the osteopathic community for many years to come.

This is a feeling I want all of you to have. The profession that all of us want so much to defend and protect can be made so much stronger if we could all just get more involved with our doctors and their issues. Beyond getting involved with them on a political level, we should be able to befriend them on a social level as well. Showing our physicians that we are strong believers in the Physician/PA team can help create an alliance that may prove vital to our legislative and professional struggles. While FAPA has the resources to do so much to help our cause, sometimes it is the simple networking done by the everyday grass roots PA that makes more difference than anything else. I would like to urge you all to make that extra effort as if it were part of your job. In essence, it really is. If you think of the specialty groups trying to take away privileges from us each legislative session or the medical insurance companies that refuse to recognize our value in the healthcare industry by not paying us, we really do all have an obligation to contribute something to that fight. The first step in contributing is maintaining your membership to FAPA, the only organization that fights for your rights in Florida. The second step is GETTING INVOLVED!