REGINA — Physician assistants (PAs) will soon be a focus of recruitment efforts to join Saskatchewan’s health-care teams and play an important role in strengthening the health system, according to the Ministry of Health.
This fall, 12 PA positions will be advertised by the Saskatchewan Health Authority and community clinics across the province.
An allocation of $1.3 million was included in the 2023-24 provincial budget to create physician assistant positions for the first time. This is part of Saskatchewan’s nearly $100 million allocation to support the Health Human Resource (HHR) Action Plan to recruit, train, incentivize and retain more health-care professionals.
Physician assistants are health professionals who have taken additional advanced training at one of the recognized programs in Canada. They practice medicine under the supervision of a licensed physician, often within a multidisciplinary health team. Physician assistants provide services in primary care, long-term care, emergency medicine, cancer care, general internal medicine and surgical specialities. Some key duties include conducting patient examinations, prescribing medications, and ordering and interpreting tests.
Earlier this year, Saskatchewan introduced legislative changes to allow the new profession of physician assistants to be licensed to practice in the province and establish their scope of practice. PAs will be regulated under the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan. The positions will be posted at www.healthcareersinsask.ca and a variety of other job platforms.
A new marketing campaign to attract health-care workers was launched late September featuring Ariana, a young Medical Laboratory Technologist from Meadow Lake. The campaign includes online, newspaper, radio and cinema ads, social media and billboards, and is running across the province, as well as British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. Watch Ariana’s story at Health-Care Opportunities In Rural Saskatchewan.
Details on health care opportunities, how to access them and more information on the province's HHR Action Plan are available at saskatchewan.ca/HHR.
Bookmark SASKTODAY.ca, Saskatchewan's home page, at this link.
