Why Licensure

In every medical and surgical subspecialty, there exists a corresponding pathology counterpart. Pathology plays a vital role behind the scenes, as no healthcare professional can act without the information we provide. The primary goal of anatomic pathology is to deliver a correct and complete diagnosis to the appropriate patient in a timely manner, ensuring that the information is understandable and useful for the treating physician.

Diagnosis

Accurate diagnosis relies heavily on thorough gross examination, which provides crucial information about a specimen’s characteristics, including size, shape, color, and texture. Certified PAs play a crucial role in this process, as they undergo extensive training in gross morphology, oncology, pathophysiology, tumor characteristics, staging guidelines, and invasion criteria for various cancers.

Treatment Guidance

Ultimately, pathology drives the management plans that clinicians rely on to treat patients, making the role of trained pathologists’ assistants essential. Trained PAs have been shown to retrieve more lymph nodes than pathology residents, which is vital for thorough assessment and treatment planning.

Effective Communication

Incomplete documentation can significantly impede a pathologist’s ability to make informed diagnoses, leading to missed critical findings and incorrect diagnoses that adversely affect patient management. Trained PAs are educated in common clinical procedures, terminology, and abbreviations, enabling effective communication with both surgeons and pathologists.

Adequate Specimen Processing

Pathologists’ assistants undergo extensive training in specimen processing, including proper fixation and preparation techniques essential for maintaining tissue quality and diagnostic accuracy.

Proper Technique in Tissue Sectioning

Errors in cutting or sectioning tissue samples can lead to the loss of critical diagnostic information. Certified PAs undergo extensive training, including a year of didactic classes followed by a year of hands-on clinical rotations.

Ensured Competence and Compliance

Licensure ensures PAs meet rigorous educational and training standards, pass competency exams, and stay current through continuing education. It provides regulatory oversight to enforce standards, prevent malpractice, and promote accountability, ultimately protecting patients and improving outcomes.

Improved Results

According to the ASCP, laboratory tests are fundamental to most medical diagnoses and treatments, and errors in testing can result in serious harm. Licensure ensures that pathologists’ assistants meet standardized education, training, and competency requirements, leading to greater diagnostic accuracy.

Protection for the Public

Pathologists’ assistants are a vital healthcare profession that requires regulation to protect the public from serious risks. Licensure sets clear standards, ensures competency, and holds professionals accountable through oversight and disciplinary action.

Definition of Scope of Practice

A clear scope of practice prevents role ambiguity and facilitates better collaboration. Licensure would establish appropriate boundaries across pathology roles while ensuring PAs can fully utilize their skills, advance professionally, and maintain job protection.

Protection of Professional Titles and Advancing Recognition

Licensure protects the integrity of the pathologists’ assistant title by ensuring only licensed PAs can represent themselves as such, preventing unqualified individuals from misusing the PA title.

Not an encroachment on pathologists’ scope of practice

Licensure does not expand or encroach upon the scope of practice reserved for pathologists. PAs cannot diagnose or sign out cases; those responsibilities remain solely with board-certified pathologists, as required by CLIA, CAP, and the Joint Commission.

Not a hiring impediment

Licensure will not restrict hiring or contribute to a PA workforce shortage. There are now 16 NAACLS-accredited PA programs graduating up to 230 students annually. Licensure would actually support hiring by creating uniform, law-protected job titles and streamlining credential verification.

Not just added bureaucracy

Without licensure, individuals with only an associate degree can perform high-complexity testing, allowing unqualified personnel to fill PA roles. Licensure ensures that only properly trained and competent professionals perform these critical duties.

Will Not Block ASCP-Certified On-the-Job Trained PAs

When states introduce licensure, they typically include a 1–2 year grandfathering period to ensure current practitioners are not excluded from the profession.

Will Not Prevent Practice Across State Lines

Similar to travel nursing, licensure does not hinder travel work. As more states adopt licensing, mutual recognition of credentials is likely to improve cross-state practice opportunities for PAs.

Will Not Eliminate Grossing Technicians

Licensing pathologists’ assistants clearly defines their full scope of responsibilities. Other personnel such as grossing technicians should be defined under a separate, limited license with distinct education and scope restrictions, as seen in states like New York.