Robin Hunter-Buskey is a native New Yorker and is a graduate of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook where she completed both the physical therapy and later the physician assistant educational programs. During her distinguished clinical career, she has worked in a variety of settings including home health care, emergency medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, substance abuse, infectious disease, rehabilitation, internal medicine and geriatrics.
Professionally, she has served as a member of various health professional boards and committees. She has been a consultant to the New York State Board for Physical Therapy and a public member of the Board for Professional Medical Conduct. She served as president of the AAPA Physician Assistant Foundation from 1999 to 2001 and as a member of the North Carolina Medical Board (NCMB) from 2000-2006. As a member of the NCMB she chaired the board’s PA Advisory Council and its Allied Health Committee, and served as a member of its Licensing, Compliance, Investigative, and Midwifery committees and its Joint Subcommittee on Nurse Practitioners. While a member of the NCMB, Hunter-Buskey was elected to the Board of Directors of the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) at its annual meeting May 17, 2005. She was the first physician assistant elected to the FSMB board and, at that time, only the sixth member of the N.C. board elected to the federation board in 48 years. In 2013, she became a member-at-large on the National Commission for Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA).
Hunter-Buskey is a graduate of the University of Nebraska Medical Center (MPAS – 2002) and A. T. Still University (DHSc – 2012). Over the years, she has been a clinical instructor, preceptor and mentor to physician assistant students, medical students and others interested in the health professions. She has worked tirelessly to increased minority recruitment and retention in health professional programs.
Hunter-Buskey currently serves as a senior physician assistant at the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (FBOP) Medical Center in Butner, NC. She holds the rank of Captain in the United States Public Health Service, and was deployed to Liberia to work in the US Public Health’s Monrovia Medical Unit/Ebola Treatment Unit in 2015. Click Here for Capt Hunter-Buskey’s photographs taken during her deployment to the USPHS MMU/ETU.
Since joining the FBOP, she has helped implement many programs to improve the health care of inmates, including the care of inmates with diabetes, improved transportation of inmates to civilian health centers and the development of other preventive health care initiatives. In 2012, she became responsible for coordinating the activities of all PAs working in the FBOP correctional facilities throughout the United States.
As an active participant in the NYSSPA, the Physician Assistant Foundation and the African American Heritage Caucus, she has received many accolades for her dedicated service to the physician assistant profession. She is a 1994 recipient of the Outstanding Leadership Award from the New York State Society of Physician Assistants (NYSSPA) and was recognized as the Outstanding PA of the Year in 2009 by the American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA).
She is the mother of two, Veronica and Bennett, and enjoys her family and involvement in volunteer services especially dedicated to helping the underprivileged.
Acknowledgments: This biography was written by Reginald Carter with the assistance of Dr. Robin Hunter-Buskey, and was submitted to the Society in February 2015. The photographs are courtesy of the PA History Society.
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