Roadmap to nationwide industrial strike by physician assistants

This press engagement is to register our opposition to the Health Professions
and Regulatory Bodies (Amendment) Bill 2023 which the Medical and Dental
Council (MDC) is sending to Parliament through the Ministry of Health. It
seeks to reduce our work to nothing, impose medical doctors on us, and
frustrate efforts to grow and develop our profession.

On June 6, 2023, we saw media reports where the Rt. Hon. Speaker recalled
Members of Parliament to the House to consider some bills including the
Health Professions and Regulatory Bodies Amendment Bill, 2023. All attempts
to get a copy of the Amendment Bill proved futile.

On July 6, 2023, the leadership of GPAA held a meeting with the Ministry of Health where we discussed a number of issues pertaining to Physician Assistants, including matters in connection with regulation of our practice under the
Medical and Dental Council, and the proposed amendment to the Health Professions and Regulatory Bodies Act, 2013 (Act 857).

The Minister assured us that nothing has been confirmed yet and that he would
ensure there is engagement to address whatever concerns we have.

That notwithstanding, some few days ago, leadership intercepted the purported Amendment Bill. Its contents when passed will spell doom for the health service delivery system especially in rural and poor communities. Because the MDC wants to take away the right of a Physician Assistant to practice medicine and dentistry, and as well prescribe medicine and push us under the direction and supervision of medical and dental practitioners.

They are trying to reverse an established practice and make a bad situation worse. There already exists a supervisory model in the health system. A Physician Assistant does not have to call a supervising physician for directions before assessing a client, requesting for laboratory investigations, making diagnosis and finally prescribing the required medicine (s) as treatment.

If we need supervision, there are senior Physician Assistants who can supervise us.

The proposed amendment is also seeking to prevent us from signing medical
forms, something which is already part of our work. For these reasons we strongly oppose the proposed amendments and call for an urgent meeting with the MDC, GHS and the Ministry of Health to stop this attempt.

The Leadership of the Ghana Physician Assistants’ Association (GPAA) wishes to use this platform to communicate to all Ghanaians about our tentative roadmap leading to a nationwide industrial strike by Physician Assistants (PAs) to drum home our displeasure against the Medical and Dental Council (MDC) and other Agencies under the Ministry of Health for their persistence in actions which undermine the practice of PAs in Ghana.

We are clinicians predominantly found at the primary healthcare level and mostly in rural and poor communities. We believe we are the bedrock of primary healthcare and the first point of call for poor and rural patients especially at the sub-district health facilities. Our opposition to this amendment bill is only one of a litany of unresolved issues we have with the health administration in this country which includes the following;

The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) revoked the credentialing of
Private Health Centres manned by PAs when in actual fact the same licenses
we possess are used to credential public health facilities.

In 4 years, over two thousand five hundred (2,500) newly qualified PAs are
sitting at home unemployed while many health facilities at the District and sub
districts levels are in urgent need of clinicians to attend to sick patients.

Non recognition and remuneration of PA Dermatologists and Psychiatrists
who had been trained in these fields by health institutions under the Ministry
of Health over the past decade.

Refusal by the Ghana Health Service to officially appoint and remunerate
Physician Assistants as Sub-districts heads under the Sub-district Health
Management System.

The MDC in 2022 unilaterally developed and launched a Scope of Practice document for only PAs trying to reduce the scope of our work and take away our existing autonomy.

Lastly, Physician Assistants on Internship are not paid internship allowance when their counterparts such nurses and doctors are paid when they undergo the same process.

We have engaged the MDC, GHS and the MoH severally to find lasting remedies to all the issues outlined but it has not yielded any result. We strongly advocate for the creation of a new health regulatory body to regulate the training and practice of Physician Assistants in Ghana as seen in Kenya and some states in the United States of America. We use this medium to serve notice that we intend to start an industrial action if our issues are not resolved as follows;

Withdrawal of OPD Services: - Monday, July 24, 2023 to Wednesday, July 26, 2023.

Withdrawal of Emergency Services:- Thursday, July 27 – Monday, July 31,
2023.

Withdrawal of all services:- Tuesday, August 1, 2023.