A new program at Dalhousie University is looking to bring students into the health-care field to help meet the growing needs of the health-care system. The two-year program aims to turn students into medically trained professionals and have them work alongside doctors and other health professionals as physician assistants. Students are trained using the “medical model” which is one of the dominant perspectives in health care. The medical model views health issues in the body as biological problems that need to be diagnosed and treated by a professional to return to their normal functions. “A physician assistant is a medically trained specialist shall we say who provides care to patients in a very similar way to physicians. The training is in the medical model so they can actually examine patients, take a history from patients and determine what they think the issue is and order appropriate testing and management,” said Dr. Michael Clory who is the assistant dean for the program in an interview with CTV’s Crystal Garrett. “This is a new role in Nova Scotia, a relatively new role, these individuals will work collaboratively with a supervising physician, so if they have some concerns that they’re not quite sure what the issue is they will collaborate with the supervising physician. But they can see patients and actually do a full spectrum of treatment in different disciplines of medicine.” Tara Lapointe, who took part in the program as a physician assistant said the program has been a very positive experience for her as well as the patients. “The first year is all didactic learning, so we learn all about medicine and the medical model, and the second year which I’m just finishing up, we get to do our clerkship, where we are placed in actual areas of medicine such as family medicine working alongside PA’s and physicians in a family practice or in surgery,” said Lapointe. “I have felt so valued, it was a really positive experience, I’d say especially in my family medicine practice, patients were able to see a provider much sooner, they were able to get a better follow-up, so the care was much more consistent for them and they were very happy to share how much that meant to them.” Clory said he thinks the program will have a positive effect on getting people access to health care in Nova Scotia “We do accept 24 students per year, so over the course of five years that’s a significant number of new health care providers, and as we talked about, they’re really physician extenders, so they take the physician work force and expands the amount of work that can be provided,” said Clory. “In primary care we anticipate that physician assistant will allow that family practice to have an extra 400 to 600 patients with faster access.” For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page
