Neurosurgery Clinic Interview Report

In an interview with Elizabet Figueroa, PA-C who works at Providence Neurosurgery Group, tried to see her view of problems and challenges for PAs in health care and see how her experience has been with working in a subspecialty clinic. At this location, the providers consist of four neurosurgeons, one NP and two PAs.
She has been welcomed to the practice from the start and feels there is no issues regarding her fitting in with the team. This group of providers happened to be in this specialty for a long time and they have no real issues with PAs. All surgeons are very well versed with working with PAs and other midlevel providers in practice. It depends on the physician or surgeon what scope of practice in this subspecialty would be for a …show more content…
Outside of the OR, manage the patient pre-operative and post-operative which, means they make all the medical decisions while patients are in the hospital for post operation stay and surgeons only round on patients to see how they and PAs are doing or in case of emergency. PAs are managing medications, follow ups, specialty care and if there are any complications that PAs is not able to handle then the surgeon will step in. This may be different in other specialty or hospitals, where there are residents attending and may effect a PAs scope of practice. PAs work alongside NPs and physicians as colleges and in collaboration with other team embers. In neurosurgery specifically they work with neurosurgeons and get help from general surgeon to put shunt, cardiothoracic surgeon to expose upper thoracic vertebrae or work alongside hospitalists specifically when patients have lots of other comorbidities. In general, there is symbiotic relationship in caring for patient, between the whole health care team. NPs have the same scope of practice and responsibilities as PAs in this specialty and work for a specific