- The fact that I can be charged almost $100 for a 10-minute urgent care visit with a physician's assistant back in August during which said physician's assistant just told me I had the flu and sent me home without even doing any tests. And that's with insurance. I'm furious about having to pay this.
- The fact that our local school system requires that each child entering school be categorized according to race (you may only check one box) and that neither "biracial" nor multiracial" are among the options. I refused to check any of the boxes, much to the displeasure of the people who were screening Little C for his entrance into kindergarten next year. They tell me I'll have to pick a racial designation for him before he goes to school next year. Essentially, they are going to force me to decide if he is "White" "African-American," "Asian," "Hispanic/Chicano" or "Native American."
Little C fits three of those (arbitrary, socially constructed) categories. He describes himself as "brown." I will not pick one. We'll see what happens.
Nov 13, 2009
Things that are absurd:
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7 comments:
Quite frankly I think it is an example of what has been called "Institutionalised Racism".
It perpetuates the "one drop" rule from the days of slavery, is quite abhorrent and everyone seems to just go along with it.
It's like Obama being the first black president. He is genetically Half "Black" like Little C, but apparently that makes him "black". The same would apparently be true if he had three white grand parents and one black one. I guess It's fine if President Obama sees himself as Black but it looks more like he just didn't get a choice to me.
Those categories are very limited, Does Asian count people from the Indian subcontinent as well or are they obliged to be "black"
Is a Spaniard "White" or "Hispanic", Suppose you are of Portuguese extraction? Italian?
I figure they need to add some fields to their database.
Ruthie, if you are going into journalism you should probably be aware that the correct term is physician assistant not physician's assistant.
Your faithful reader and fellow PA.
Mev: I'm not. It's impossible to find work in that field that pays a living wage. I'm going into the academic study of media. Working on getting a PhD.
I didn't know that about the correct way to refer to a PA. Will file that away. :)
Mev, but surely Physician's Assistant is grammatically more accurate and works better internationally?
Purely in descriptive terms "physician assistant" implies the assistant is actually a trained physician and by extension an MD.
If that is actually the case then fine.
In any case titles like that tend to change with the latest mode.
Mogg's... the placement of the apostrophe and the appropriate name for the job a PA does is a big sore spot for this particular profession. I really thought that Ruthie was studying journalism (my bad Ruthie), and that was the only reason I pointed that out. But since you asked, here you go...
There are a few fledgling programs internationally that are similar, but primarily this is a US profession... so I could understand why there would be international confusion on what a PA is.
This is a profession that has been around for 40 years. Unfortunately the name was poorly chosen. Physician Assistant is often confused with Medical Assistant, and so it has been a long battle to get people to understand the level of training it takes to get this degree.
Medical Assistants are the people that truly "assist" the physician. They get a brief history, they get the drug allergies, they take vital signs, then the doctor comes in and sees them.
I work at a primary care office and I see my own patients. My medical assistant does the same thing she'd do for the doctor in our office, then I come in and I do the history, I do the exam, I do the diagnosis, and I write the prescription. The doctor I work with is down the hall doing the same thing with his patients. While I work with him, I am also working independently, not assisting him. Now, that being said, I am not a trained physician and by extension an MD. There are cases that are beyond my scope of practice. Typically the front desk knows how to triage that person, but if they get it wrong, I walk down the hall and ask my doc to come down and check out that patient for me. So, really, I'm not assisting, but I'm also not an extension of an MD... though some people refer to PA's as physician extenders. I think Physician Associate is a better term, but it's doubtful any changes are coming there anytime soon.
I wish it would be easy to change with the latest mode, but because of 40 years of fighting for a little recognition and understanding, switching to the name most often suggested as a substitute (physician associate) then that battle for recognition has to be started over in a lot of ways.
That being said, we are making some strides. Money magazine rated PAs as the #2 top 50 best jobs in America.
Sorry to usurp your comments here Ruthie.
Thanks for the clarification. I knew that being a PA required lots of skill/education, but I didn't know all of the semantic distinctions between the medical careers you're describing.
It's similarly hard to pin down what I'm studying. :) Because journalism is a practical skill, and because undergraduate journalism students ARE studying to be journalists, it's hard to explain to people who aren't personally very familiar with the discipline precisely what "mass communication" is. I had this precise conversation with a college friend of mine this morning. It's not "media studies" either, or "communication studies" [shudder]. Those are very different things.
Ruthie/Mev, I guess it's all about your working environment and experience. The world you live in.
Now to me PA means Personal Assistant.
I must admit I would left to my self think this was the sort of role a triage nurse would fill, like your medical assistant.
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