A Healthcare Cadre That Meets A Country’s Needs

Introduction

Abstract

A global healthcare workforce crisis exists.  Physician Assistant/Physician Assistant Comparable (PA/PA-comparable) professions can help fill this gap especially in areas such as obstetrics/gynecology, surgery, and infectious disease.  These professions, recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) include: Physician Assistants/Physician Associates (PA), Clinical Officers/Clinical Associates, and Assistant Medical Officers.  They exist in over 50 countries under numerous different names as there is no unifying, international title for this cadre.¹ (Table 1). The International Labour Organization (ILO) classifies these providers as Paramedical Practitioners in the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) document; however, the ILO classification has brought some confusion around the name as being confused with Ambulance Workers which is a separate ISCO classification.² For the purpose of this paper, we will refer to these professions as PA/PA-comparable cadre.  In each country, the PA/PA-comparable, like medical doctors, have variations in education, accreditation, regulation, licensing, and scope of practice. There is limited research on this group and very little written by local PA/PA-comparables themselves, thus the following articles are a medical anthropological start to gathering the PA/PA-comparable history from the perspective of this international cadre.