HAPPY INTERNATIONAL PHYSICIAN ASSOCIATES WEEK!

October 6 to 12 is International Physician Associates Week.  We salute all our brother and sister PAs. Especially all the old timers. Those of us who truly made this profession. Our profession started in the 1960s, so we are celebrating fifty-five years, and we are worldwide, so this is International Physician Associates Week.  We have come a long way, still much has to be done.
I was one of the first PAs in the country and am a living history of the many fights we had. Along the way, we gained much and lost a few too.  Though AAPA likes to take credit for all the achievements, the practitioners in the field are the ones who deserve credit.  For state by state, and country by country, we fought the prejudices of our fellow practitioners, government regulators, legislators, media and the public.
When I first came to New Mexico in 1973, no one knew what a PA was.  The secretary of the NM Board of Medical Examiners, told me to my face: "PAs will practice here over my dead body."  I am proud to say that not only are we still practicing here, I actually served as the first PA on the NM Medical Board forty years later, and held his job as secretary of NM Medical Board in 2008.
My book Practicing from the Heart in the Age of Technology is all about our experiences and struggles, as a PA, in this country and around the world.  Humayun J. Chaudhry, DO, MACP, FRCP, President and CEO of Federation of State Medical Boards wrote the foreword to this book.
Paul B. Roth, MD, MS, F ACEP - Dean of the UNM College of Medicine, Chancellor, UNM Health Sciences Center, CEO, UNM Health System, said: In Practicing from the Heart, Reza Ghadimi has captured the true heart of our healing profession… Every student thinking of entering the health professions should read this book.
Go to the home page of this site and read their endorsements and on the Blog page, the many stories that truly make our history.
 
                                             Keep up the good work and do not give up the fight.