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Date Posted: 19:34:27 02/26/06 Sun
Author: Trumpet
Subject: Physician Assistants

In the United States, physician assistants (PA) are non-physicians licensed to practice medicine with a physician's supervision. This supervision, in most cases, need not be direct or on site and many PAs practice in remote or underserved areas in satellite clinics. PAs can treat patients and, in most states, prescribe medicine, and in some states in the US they carry a DEA number that gives them authority to prescribe controlled medications like narcotics. PAs in surgical practices also serve as first assists in surgery. PAs provide medical services that are reimbursed under Medicare and third party insurances. Physician assistants and Nurse Practitioners both provide similar services in most states, the major distinction being that nurse practitioners are registered nurses by trade. Both are also known as Advanced Practice Clinicians (APCs) or mid-level practitioners (MLPs).

PAs should not be confused with medical assistants, who perform routine clinical and clerical tasks in a physician's office.

The Physician Assistant profession has its beginnings in the highly trained Hospital corpsmen of the Vietnam War era. Dr. Eugene Stead of the Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina put together the first class of PAs in 1965, to expand the quality of medical care resulting from a shortage of primary care physicians. For his first class, he selected former Navy corpsmen who received considerable medical training during their military service and during the war in Vietnam but who had no comparable civilian employment or equivalent. He based the curriculum of the PA program in part on his knowledge of the fast-track training of medical doctors during World War II.

Physician assistants held about 65,000 jobs in 2005. The number of jobs is greater than the number of practicing PAs because some hold two or more jobs. For example, some PAs work with a supervising physician, but also work in another practice, clinic, or hospital. According to the American Academy of Physician Assistants, there were about 40,469 certified PAs in clinical practice as of January 2000.

Almost 56 percent of jobs for PAs were in the offices and clinics of physicians, either Allopathic or Osteopathic. About 32 percent were in hospitals. The rest were mostly in public health clinics, temporary help agencies, schools, prisons, home healthcare agencies, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. According to the American Academy of Physician Assistants, about one-third of all PAs provide healthcare to communities with fewer than 50,000 residents, in which physicians may be in limited supply.


Many accredited PA programs are in existence in the United States today. One such program, Drexel University's Hahnemann Physician Assistant program is one of the finest, and oldest, in the nation.

A physician assistant may use the post-nominal initials PA, RPA, PA-C or RPA-C, where the R indicates Registered and the C indicates Certified.

American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA)
http://www.aapa.org

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