A study on the training and legalization of physician assistants

Abstract

Every year, South Korean medical field is undergoing significant shortage of residents, especially in the field of surgery. Therefore, hospitals hire physician assistants(PA) to cover for short-staffed physicians and increase the quality of medical care. PA’s perform medical checkups, surgery assistance, prescription, anesthesia, and directing nurses to aid physicians. Foreign nations like the United States and Canada produce highly skilled PA’s via official PA training programs and standardized license exams, and PA’s are allowed to perform limited medical practice. However in South Korea, lack of legal basis for PA’s eligibility, training program, and range of allowed medical practice causes social problems like unlicensed medical care and medical accident. South Korea’s objective for PA program is significantly different from that of the United States and Canada. In those countries, purpose of PA is to aid and cover for primary care, whereas South Korean PA program is used for remedying surgeon shortage problem and hospitals’ business purposes, such as cost reduction and treatment time saving. This study criticizes implementing a new occupational field based on foreign PA policy will cause numerous problems and limits due to the difference of purpose. Therefore, establishing a new management& operating system for medical support persons considering patient safety, supply of health medical manpower, medical field requirements and characteristics of different medical institutions will be a realistic solution. Tasks for PA’s should be categorized and trained accordingly so that PA’s quality increases. Also, appropriate reward system, athority, and eligibility of PA’s are required according to their experience and ability. Registered nurse(RN) in South Korea is recognized as professional medical personnels that went through systematic education. This study suggests improvising RN program and utilizing it will be a efficient and realistic alternative solution for this problem.