Job in Review: Physician Assistant

Most people know physician assistants as health care professional whom they can see on short notice and more often the their actual doctor. Although this is true in many instances, physician assistants do much more than this and work in many fields outside of family practice. A physician assistant, or PA for short, is a health care professional who carries out many of the same day to day tasks as the physician. The physician, however, is responsible for supervising the PA. Physician Assistants are certified by the government to practice medicine only under this supervision.

Physician assistants have a broad range of duties which they can perform including, but not limited to, diagnosing and treating illness, performing physicals, the ability to order and interpret tests. They are also able to counsel patients on preventative health measures, assist with surgeries, and write prescriptions for medicine. Physician assistant aren't limited to simply treating patients. They are also able to educate others in the field, complete research in various medical disciplines, and may even hold administrative positions.

Education for physician assistants follows the medical model used to educate their physician counterparts. The model is used to compliment the system of those they will be working with closest so that communication and the working environment can be at their best. Once a PA student graduates from school they must pass a national exam to become a PA-C, or certified physician assistant. This distinguishment allows for the student to be a "real" practicing physician capable of treating patients under physician supervision. To keep this certification the new health care professional must complete ongoing education over the next two years, and every two years there after, of 50 hours a year for 100 hours over the two year span. The physician assistant certified must also retake the national exam test every six years to be recertified.

The profession of physician assistant has not been around for long when compared to many other health care professionals, specifically physicians. The idea for the position of physician assistant arose in the 1960's when physicians were sparse in many parts of the country. To fill this gap, Dr. Eugene Stead of the prestigious

Duke
University
Medical
Center

proposed the idea of the physician assistant. The first class was formed in 1965 and was comprised of Navy members who had received substantial medical training but had no position in society to use the skills once out of the military. The curriculum for this program used a program to train physicians quickly during WWII. Physician assistants still follow a similar track completing education and rotations in an accelerated 5-year program.

A physician assistant can practice in any area of medicine in which a physician practices. Some of the most common fields include surgery and surgery specialties, family practice, pediatrics, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, and last but not least family medicine. Each of these fields is unique not only in the patients you treat but also in the medical setting and problems presented to you on a daily basis. In school, a PA student receives a broad training in all fields of medicine and the complete rotations in several different medical fields. Although a physician assistant doesn't complete specialized education programs for their chosen field, on site training specializes them to the field. One of the biggest advantages to being a PA as opposed to a physician is the ability to switch health fields without returning to medical school.

Physician assistants have solved many of the problems our health care system faced in the 1960's. They are health care providers who are able to act semi-independently of the doctor while remaining under a certain degree of supervision. The PA provides those in need of seeing a health care professional on short notice or those in rural areas with a timelier alternative than that of the Physician. The shorter training and increased flexibilities makes being a physician assistant an attractive career for those looking to become health care professional without the added stress and time of being a physician.