Doctor? Doctor? PA’s can now be called Doctor

Is this right answer for the workforce shortage in EM? Keep your eyes open as new developments unfold. This may be the solution that face rural ED’s and difficult to staff locations where malpractice is still an issue. It is unlikely to think that resident education will be effected but as usual instead of focusing on our issues we will waste endless energy in discussions about purity. Is purity the issue or is treating the masses that flock to our door our mission? As a specialty we will debate and never decide, post in our camps but I welcome all with open arms who want treat the growing number of patients with narcopenia, the febrile Tylenol deficient babies, and the non-ambulatory elders who have lived too long because of science.

Please note new classification for emergency med and orthop PAs.
An article posted in Advance for Physicians says: There's a new PA degree in town, and its name is "Doctor."
The U.S. Army and Baylor University have created the first clinical doctorate degree for PAs. Army PAs will receive a doctor of science physician assistant (DScPA) degree after successfully completing an 18-month residency in emergency medicine at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.
The first four DScPAs will graduate in a few weeks, followed by a fifth in early 2008. Eight more Army PAs began the 18-month program in July 2007, and 10 are scheduled to start in July 2008.
"The Army needs more emergency-medicine-trained, trauma-trained PAs for the battlefield," says Maj. Leonard Gruppo, MPAS, PA-C, who is the director of postgraduate education for the U.S. Army. "It was difficult for us to ask PAs to go through 18 months of incredibly rigorous, demanding training and then give them a certificate, as was done with our previous 12-month residency upon which this is based, and is done with almost all postgraduate (PA) residencies.
"We wanted to recognize their training and expertise, and there is no other way to do it right now. There is no board certification for advanced (PA) training or specialty certification (for PAs). There's no way to recognize advanced training in a way other people (outside the PA profession) would understand. We feel that the training is doctorate-level. When we compared (the PA doctorate program) to (doctorate programs for) other professions such as pharmacy or physical therapy, it compared favorably. This (PA doctorate training) is even more robust than many other (doctorate) programs."
The Army conceived of a PA clinical doctorate program in 1999 and began development of the initial program in earnest in 2003. The Army plans to convert all of its PA residencies in emergency medicine and orthopedics to doctorate programs, Gruppo says.
In addition to being the appropriate degree for advanced clinical training, these PA clinical doctorate degrees should also be a strong incentive for PAs to remain in the military and possibly for civilian PAs to consider military service, Gruppo says. The Army needs a large number of well-trained and experienced PAs to care for soldiers injured in combat.
"We did a study of Army PAs and two-thirds of the respondents said that the availability of these (doctorate-level PA) programs would significantly affect their decisions to stay on active duty," Gruppo says. "That's a pretty enthusiastic response."