Glicken Awarded AAPA Honorary Membership in San Diego
By Eileen Evans
Anita Duhl Glicken, MSW, a past president of PAEA, was selected as this year’s sole recipient for AAPA Honorary Membership, presented at a crermony during AAPA's 37th Annual PA Conference in San Diego last month. AAPA awards honorary membership to PAs or non-PAs who have rendered distinguished service to the PA profession.
Glicken, a full professor and section head of pediatrics at the University of Colorado at Denver, also directs its child health associate/PA program. Details of Glicken’s career and her assessment of the PA profession can be read in a feature piece in the Academy’s premier issue of its new magazine, PA Professional, as well as in an AAPA press release. PAEA Networker interviewed Glicken for this article.
Glicken came to PA education in 1982, with a background in social work. In a March 08 Networker article, she wrote of the influence Henry Silver, MD, then PA program director at the University of Colorado, had on her career and in PA Professional described how Dr. Silver “was looking for someone who could bring a non-PA mental health perspective to the program.” Glicken signed on as an instructor and has worked with the PA program ever since. In addition to Silver, whom Glicken referred to as a "visionary," she said it has been her privilege to have worked with some of the greatest minds in medicine. All of them share Glicken's passion for innovation, primarily directed at improving health care. She cited as one example the introduction of evidence-based medicine (EBM) into the PA curriculum in the mid-90s.
Glicken is now devoting her creative efforts to interprofessional education. Borrowing from literature describing the importance of team-based decision making in aviation,Glicken explained how shared medical decision making results in what is ultimately the most important outcome: improved patient safety. Glicken emphasized the need for PAs to be "at the table" as leaders promoting this issue.
PAs have the opportunities to lead in the area of communication within interprofessional education, Glicken said. “Our medical colleagues are not addressing this; physicians are taught to communicate with patients but often receive little instruction in communicating with other health professionals.” She credited PAs as being among the most successful communicators, as she said, are nurses.
Glicken sees the existing partnership between PAs and physicians as key for PAs, who need to be strong facilitators of team-based shared medical decision making. PAs also must be able to define and explain their added value to the team. And it is time, Glicken said, for health care professions to “learn together what it means to be a team member and to practice those skills during preclinical training.” PAs, she said, can and should be “leaders in medicine anticipating and positioning themselves to create innovative models of health education that engage other professions."
Glicken has held many positions with PAEA (or formerly, the Association of Physician Assistant Programs — APAP): she developed the curriculum and was project leader for the Basic Skills Faculty Development annual workshop for more than 10 years and was a long-time member, and subsequently chair, of the Faculty Development Institute (FDI); she was project director of the PA Faculty Development Education and Practice HRSA Contract for three years and chaired its national advisory committee. Glicken also served as APAP representative to the NCCPA Eligibility Special Committee for Competency-Based Curriculum. In May 2005, Glicken was elected to the PAEA board, where she served three years in the presidential cycle. She has been investigator and co-investigator on numerous research grants and contracts and has a long history as a reviewer, contributor to the literature, and presenter at national and international workshops. Since her term as past president, Glicken has helped to mentor future FDI leaders.
