Ghana Physicians Assistant Association (GPAA) has kicked against the launch of the scope of practice document for physicians’ assistants saying the Medical and dental council (MDC) hasn’t been fair preliminary to the launch on Monday 4, July 2022.
In a press briefing the president of GPAA, Emmanuel Yaw Appiah said the scope of practice document is to serve as a policy document to guide the practice of physician Assistantship in Ghana and is supposed to go through a consultative process where all the key stakeholders are consulted but the MDC failed to avail the documents for the key stakeholders to peruse the documents
He also called on the ministry of health and other stakeholders to reconsider their earlier call to amend the current health professions regulatory bodies Act, 2003 (Act857) to create a different to regulate the practice of PA
“Every organisation or institution needs to be managed by its parent body, we are physician assistants and therefore we need to be governed by a body of physicians, we appeal to the government and relevant stakeholders to listen to our plea to create our own body to regulate our activities”
He also expressed his dissatisfaction with a statement made by the chairman of MDC that Physician assistants are not Doctors. He said it’s a false claim, no physician has impersonated to be a doctor
He, therefore, advised the chairman to acknowledge the hard work of PAs and not to tarnish their hard work
“We wish to categorically deny the claim that is suggestive of Physician Assistants
impersonating doctors. For crying out loud, the MDC is our Regulator and we expect that
even if there have been some forms of disciplinary issues, laid down internal disciplinary
measures could be employed too.
Also, we want to put on record that no one chose our career path for us but ourselves and
never are we going to pretend to be who we are not”
