What is a Physician Assistant?
What is a Physician Assistant (PA)?
Physician assistants are health care professionals licensed to practice medicine with physician supervision. PAs conduct physical exams, diagnose and treat illnesses, order and interpret tests, counsel on preventive health care, assist in surgery, and write prescriptions. Physician assistants have a lot of autonomy in medical decision making and provide a broad range of diagnostic and therapeutic services.
Physician assistants are found in all areas of medicine. They practice in the areas of primary care medicine as well in surgery and the surgical subspecialties.
How is a Physician Assistant educated?
Physician assistants are educated in intensive medical programs accredited by the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA). The average PA program curriculum runs approximately 26 months. PA students are taught, as are medical students, to diagnose and treat medical problems.
PAs are required to take ongoing continuing medical education classes and be retested on their clinical skills on a regular basis. A number of postgraduate PA programs have also been established to provide practicing PAs with advanced education in medical specialties.
What does “PA-C” stand for? What does the “C” mean?
Physician assistant-certified. It means that the person who holds the title has met the defined course of study and has undergone testing by the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA), an independent organization that represents a number of different medical professionals. To maintain that “C” after “PA”, a physician assistant must log 100 hours of continuing medical education every two years and take the recertification exam every six years.
For more information about physician assistants, visit the American Academy of Physician Assistants.