Mission Statement:
The mission of the National Association of Physician Assistants is to promote the Physician Assistant profession to the public, physicians, health care administrators and other healthcare personnel through media, conferences, personal meetings and other means of communications with organizations, physicians, healthcare administrators, and pharmaceutical organizations.

As we are a new organization, there are many of our colleagues who want more information about our beliefs and philosophies. We understand the concerns you may have for our short term and long term goals. We receive e-mails and phone calls every day asking why we are here and what it is we hope to accomplish. The philosophies of the National Association of Physician Assistants are simple. We believe in the utilization of public relations to further promote our profession to the public and professionals. Not politics. Not power. Not comPArisons of our group to others. Our overall goal, is promotion of the PA profession. This needs to be done in multiple areas, including but not limited to the public, physicians, pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry. So how does a newly formed organization tackle such a monumental task? We take one step at a time.

We would next like to explain the fact that there are two national organizations. We are not blaming the AAPA. They do what they feel is the best for our profession, especially in legislation and many other areas. But there is a public relations gap. That is the void we have taken on the responsibility to fill. We will promote our profession through television, magazines, and other media venues, the way our colleagues have always hoped someone would promote it.

The other advantage we can offer is how our organization is run. We purposely set up our organization so that we can make decisions without the many miles of red tape and politics so ingrained in most other organizations. We do not have meetings to decide when to have the next meeting. We do not need members from the House of Delegates to ask us to research an idea or concern, and then meet back in 6 months to a year and then talk about it some more. We can act on it immediately. We can get things done without all of the complications usually associated with a large organization. Having been on many boards of directors, we have been so frustrated when 90% of our energy is put into the problem, and 10% into the solution. We hope to change that.

We need members. No one is going to take us seriously with 25, 100, or 1000 members. We need 10,000 or 30,000 members. Interest for our organization started from a posting on the physician assistant forums group www.physicianassistantforum.com . We had so many positive comments that we decided to jump in head first and carry out our idea. The Advance for Physician Assistants magazine picked up our story and Steve Cornell interviewed us. The interview was published in the February issue as well as on their website http://physician-assistant.advanceweb.com/common/Editorial. From there, Michael Banuchi, founder of the PA forums e-mailed our new poster and announcement to 12,000 members. Bill from PAWorld http://www.PAworld.net/ placed an ad on his subscription e-mail service and has an exposure of over 35,000 PAs. Our numbers are slowly gaining momentum.

We have had an amazing number of people offer their assistance to help in our cause. The number of students offering was just as impressive. So with this wealth of manpower, we are starting our camPAign. Out of the gate we are doing the following:

Brian is working with pharmaceutical comPAnies. He is in the process of grant writing for monies to use for our initial media promotions. He is getting quotes for TV and print advertising as the pharmaceutical comPAnies require this information to consider the grants. We need one, or a possibly a few large corporations as a PArtner to support our efforts.

I am working on getting the media in our arena for promotion of the PA profession from an angle of the upcoming shortage of primary care physicians and the ever increasing waiting times and overcrowding in the emergency dePArtments.

We are both answering e-mails, getting all of the best people we can, and putting together the best team we can for our organization. We are working on a definition of what a PA is, so anyone looking to hire a PA can come to our site and quickly see what we have to offer.

We are also working on a downloadable brochure with more detailed information and photographs to hand out. We are trying to keep our website simple and organized and easy to navigate.

Tina Esposito, our Pharm-D is starting our program of educating the pharmacy industry on what PAs do and how we prescribe. Tired of seeing your SPs name on the prescription bottle that you wrote? That is what we are working on. She is pursuing the pharmacy boards in each state to go over the regulations with them and to find out how we can get the message across to each individual pharmacist.

We are putting together our board of advisors with the best people we can find to help in our promotional efforts. We are bringing on students, an RN, other physicians, and educators. We have, what we feel to be, a well rounded mix of professionals with the same philosophies and goals.

The website is a work in progress. We need the site to be as functional as possible, not just for the membership, but especially for the physician or healthcare persons who will utilize our site to assist in the decision making process of hiring a physician assistant. We are working with our webmaster and our board to start adding more features to the site.

We always look forward to your comments, suggestions, and requests for involvement in our organization. We want ours to be an organization that is accessible to our members. We do not want ours to be an organization that is so filled with hierarchy that we lose sight in what our goals and purposes are. One member asked what benefits were we offering our membership. We assured her that we would not be offering her a credit card, cheap automotive insurance rates, nor a good deal on refinancing her home. What we are offering is something that has not been done in the PAst, and that is the education and professional promotion of our profession through PR and marketing. When the pharmaceutical comPAnies, physicians and the public are educated as to exactly what it is we do, and understand how the public benefits, how the physicians make money because of us, and how the pharmaceutical industry make billions of dollars with the 280 million prescriptions we write a year, then things will change. We also offered her the opportunity to become a more important professional, and have more decision making abilities in the medical arena. And who wouldn’t be for that?