Ep22 - The Role of the Physician Assistant: Ally or Competitor? Joseph M Daleo

The Pursuit of Health Podcast

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On this episode of The Pursuit of Health Podcast we dive further into the realm of public health by pausing to learn about the invaluable role of the Physician Assistant. We are fortunate to have a frontline clinician, educator and pioneer, Joseph M. Daleo, as our guest to take us through this topic.
Major Daleo is an active member of the US Army Reserve and holds a Doctorate Degree of Physician Assistant Studies from Touro University. He wears many honorable hats including an Assistant Professorship and the Directorship of Clinical Operations at NY Touro College’s Physician Assistant Program. He is a Clinical Instructor for SUNY Stony Brook’s Family Medicine and Nurse Practitioner Program as well as the Supervising Physician Assistant for the American Family Care’s Covid-19 Mitigation and Vaccination Program.
Major Daleo begins our discussion by taking us through his often bumpy personal journey to pursue a health career as a practicing Physician Assistant and educator. In so doing, he emphasizes that Physician Assistants are a vital and unique profession within the US healthcare system. He explains the honorable history of the Physician Assistant profession in the US and marvels at the exponential growth of this field both domestically and globally over the past few decades.
Our guest sheds some very important light on the misconceptions about the Physician Assistant model, stressing that this model supports a complementary, not adversarial, interaction of healthcare professionals on behalf of the patient. He provides us with a sobering reminder of the serious gaps and failures of our current system and provides much needed recommendations to make healthcare partnerships stronger to address the disparities of acute and chronic disease. He sees physician assistants as one of the critical “force multipliers” of a potentially robust approach to healthcare reform.
We finish our fascinating discussion with Major Daleo wisely advising us all to continue to adopt the pioneer spirit that made our health system exceptional in the first place. He urges us to remain open-minded so that we may learn and apply new preventative and treatment modalities to the benefit of our patients, clinicians and society.
Dr. Fethke and the team at The Pursuit of Health Podcast look forward to our audience’s feedback. We can be reached @drfethkemd on Facebook and Instagram, and our upcoming website - drfethkemd.com.
References:

1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236248847_Origins_of_the_physician_assistant_movement_in_the_United_States
2. https://pahx.org/timeline/
3. https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/clinical-care/why-physician-assistants-and-nurse-practitioners-need-supervision-say-physician-groups
4. https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2020/01/stop-the-war-on-pas-and-nps.html
5. https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/physician-assistants-and-their-role-primary-care/2012-05
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