APA-AAI prioritizes education, development for advanced professionals in allergy, asthma

Key takeaways:

• Conference sessions focus on practical clinical advice.
• The roles of physician assistants and nurse practitioners continue to evolve.
• Trust is essential to successful practice.

SAN ANTONIO — Career development as well as continuing education and connections are among the goals of the Association of PAs in Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, according to incoming president Heather O’Connell, PA-C.

“Our main goal, of course, is to foster the development of allergy PAs and NPs,” O’Connell told Healio during the group’s 16th annual conference.

The organization’s training opportunities include workshops in specialized areas such as the session on pulmonary function testing held during this conference, as O’Connell noted the value of practical coursework.

“We’re going to try to give you information that you as a PA or NP can take home today,” she said. “We’re really trying to target the clinical piece of the picture.”

Other sessions during the conference included guidelines for drug allergy de-labeling, diagnosing and treating urticaria, identifying periodic fever syndromes, managing oral food challenges, and strategies for managing nasal polyps, among others.

“From morning to evening, it’s back-to-back meetings for you, the PA or the NP,” O’Connell said. “Some of these other larger conferences, sometimes you can get lost. There’s a number of different tracks you can take, and there’s no gaps here.”

Knowing that attendees are busy, she continued, the APA-AAI fits these opportunities into a single weekend.

“That’s a benefit,” O’Connell said.

These opportunities are essential because the specialty is relatively small with only a “handful of places” that provide resources and information, O’Connell said, especially as the role of physician assistants and nurse practitioners continues to grow.

“One of the big things that I’ve seen that has changed is the PA’s role in food allergies,” she said. “PAs were always important in terms of taking history and doing testing, and oral food challenges.”

But as oral immunotherapy has become so common in allergy practices, O’Connell continued, many physician assistants and nurse practitioners are running these programs or play a significant role in them.

“That’s a big one,” she said. “Our information, our research and therapeutics in food allergies continues to grow, so that, I suspect, will continue to grow as well.”

New indications for biologics and other therapies impact workload too, O’Connell said.

“With all these new treatments, essentially, there’s just increased demand,” she said.

For example, the FDA’s approval of omalizumab (Xolair; Genetech, Novartis) for food allergy has increased options for patients, demand for the drug, and workloads for staff.

“That’s a conversation that I’ve had with every single patient that I’ve seen in IgE-mediated food allergy,” O’Connell said. “A lot of physicians are allowing their PAs and NPs to take a bigger role in their clinics to help them manage all this increased volume.”

Sometimes, these new treatments are part of clinical studies, giving physician assistants and nurse practitioners opportunities in research, such as acting as liaisons between drug investigators and patients.

“Not that PAs and NPs in this specialty aren’t already super busy,” O’Connell said.

In addition to staying on top of their own clinical education, O’Connell added, physician assistants and nurse practitioners are essential to patient education in all the diseases that they treat too.

“A big part of having an allergy is knowing what the allergy is and how to avoid it,” she said. “That’s usually a really important part of managing your disease, not just the medications.”

Noting her own experience, O’Connell said that physician assistants and nurse practitioners attend the sick visits as well, such as asthma and hives flares.

“What happened here? What was your trigger? Are we able to identify it? Are we able to modify it? And then, how are we going to change your medications?” she said. “We get this really special role of helping the patient out when they need it most, when they’re having difficulty.”

Collaboration between the staff is essential to successful treatment too, O’Connell continued. When physician assistants and nurse practitioners first join allergy and asthma practices, she said, they rely on their colleagues as they begin learning about the specialty.

“I remember when I started in allergy, asthma and immunology. I had been working in family medicine for a while prior to that, and it was a whole new world,” she said. “This is indepth information that you need to know as a specialty PA or NP.”

Reciprocation is important too, she continued.

“We as PAs and NPs strive to earn the respect and trust of our physician allergists as a valuable part of the healthcare team,” O’Connell said. “With proper guidance, education and training, we as allergy PAs and NPs can provide evidence-based care to patients of all ages and play a large role in access to care for allergy patients.”

O’Connell hopes that this recognition extends beyond individual physician assistants and nurse practitioners and to the APA-AAI as well.

“As an organization, we would love to be recognized by allergist physicians as a reliable source of information, a reliable tool for their PAs and NPs,” she said.

Finally, O’Connell said she hopes the APA-AAI enables physician assistants and nurse practitioners to connect, share their experiences and support each other.

“We also want to provide opportunities for people to network, meet one another, discuss with one another,” she said. “One of the goals that we have might be to find a way that we can communicate or continue that education throughout the year and get a little bit more dialogue going there.”

For more information:

Heather O’Connell, PA-C, can be reached at hroconnell@gmail.com.