Advanced Practice Providers in Cellular Therapy: survey results from the ASTCT APP Special Interest Group exploring clinical roles, compensation and job satisfaction.

Background: Advanced practice providers (APPs), which include physician assistants/associates and advanced practice nurses, are critical members of the transplant and cellular therapy (TCT) care team. Despite broad utilization in transplant centers, there is little published literature on the clinical roles and responsibilities, staffing models, compensation structure, and job satisfaction of TCT APPs. This study represents the results of a national survey administered by the APP Special Interest Group to better characterize the TCT APP workforce.

Objective: To characterize the TCT APP workforce by investigating clinical roles and responsibilities, compensation and institutional support, and job satisfaction.

Methods: A 25-item web-based survey addressing four domains (transplant center data, APP roles and responsibilities, compensation and institutional support, and job satisfaction). Surveys were sent to participants through a chain-referral sampling method. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression.

Results: A total of 198 responses were analyzed, representing 64 transplant centers of varying size from 29 states. APPs report working in inpatient and outpatient settings and performing a broad array of TCT-associated procedures including bone marrow biopsy (78%), lumbar puncture (43.2%), intrathecal chemotherapy (47.0%), and cellular infusions (45.9%). Median salary of respondents was $110,000 - $119,000 and was significantly associated with geographic location of transplant center and years of experience. A minority of respondents reported no funding (4.2%) or time (9.8%) supporting continuing education. A majority of APPs (55.1%) do not feel they are appropriately paid. A majority (54.3%) did not feel that their center supported a good work-life balance. Nearly 35.4% of respondents did not feel valued in their role.

Conclusions: This survey represents the first to characterize the TCT APP workforce in the United States. APPs are highly integrated into the TCT care team and can serve as means to improve patient access to TCT therapies given a worsening physician shortage. However, the lack of satisfaction with compensation and work-life balance could represent barriers to recruitment and retention of TCT APPs and warrant future studies to better characterize.