Careers and Majors > Health & Medicine

Physician Assistant

By Paul Adams

As a physician assistant, you’ll be part of a team approach to providing quality health care to more Americans. PAs practice medicine under the supervision of licensed physicians, and they work in a wide variety of health care settings.

The physician assistant profession offers an alternative for those who want to practice medicine but may not be able to afford the time or cost of becoming a physician.

Physician assistants take patient medical histories, perform comprehensive physical exams, order and interpret laboratory and diagnostic tests, assist in surgery, and diagnose and treat both common and complex medical problems.

The PA profession was founded more than 38 years ago to address a shortage of primary care physicians. Today, without physician assistants, parts of our country—rural as well as inner-city—would have little or no access to medical care.

The Physician Assistant profession is one of the nation’s fastest-growing careers. The demand today for qualified PAs far exceeds the supply—a trend that is expected to continue. In 2004, there were approximately 66,000 PAs working in the United States and more than 130 accredited physician assistant training programs.

Most PA programs require a minimum of two years of college with a science emphasis; some also require prior health care experience, such as military or paramedical training. Most students in accredited PA programs have nearly four years of prior health care experience before they’re admitted.

Training programs typically combine classroom studies and clinical rotations (seeing and treating patients), and PA students complete more than 2,000 hours of supervised clinical practice before they graduate.

According to the American Academy of Physician Assistants, the median income for physician assistants in full-time clinical practice is about $82,000; median income for first-year graduates is about $72,000.

To find out more about the physician assistant profession and for a list of all accredited degree programs, visit www.aapa.org, the website of the American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA).