Commentary from the front lines: American physician assistants working in a United Kingdom emergency department.

Making Research Matter; Comment on “Public Spending on Health Service and Policy Research in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States: A Modest Proposal”

We offer a UK-based commentary on the recent “Perspective” published in IJHPM by Thakkar and Sullivan. We are sympathetic to the authors’ call for increased funding for health service and policy research (HSPR). However, we point out that increasing that investment – in any of the three countries they compare: Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom– will ipso facto not necessarily lea...

Physician extenders in the emergency department.

S mith and Tevis have provided a helpful comparative overview of the background, training, and practice environment of physician’s assistants (PAs) working in US and UK emergency departments (EDs). However, they leave unanswered a number of questions about the role and relative value of PAs. This commentary highlights many of the issues that remain to be addressed and their wider implications. ...

Pain management in the emergency department.

Public Spending on Health Service and Policy Research in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States: A Modest Proposal

Health services and policy research (HSPR) represent a multidisciplinary field which integrates knowledge from health economics, health policy, health technology assessment, epidemiology, political science among other fields, to evaluate decisions in health service delivery. Health service decisions are informed by evidence at the clinical, organizational, and policy level, levels with distinct...

Development of the United Kingdom physician associate profession.

The world of healthcare is changing, and patient needs are changing with it. Traditional doctor-driven models of workforce planning are no longer sustainable in the United Kingdom (UK) healthcare economy, and newer models are needed. In the multiprofessional, multiskilled clinical workforce of the future, the physician associate (PA) has a fundamental role to play as an integrated, frontline, g...