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Most PAs worry about whether the employment market will be there in the future, whether we can gain reimbursement for more of our clinical activities, or whether we can improve [...]

Leslie A. Kole Two months ago, the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA) elected to remove AAPA representation on its board of directors. A flurry of protests and [...]

ABSTRACT An important issue facing the physician assistant (PA) profession is how it can achieve a balance between supply of, and demand for, the services that PAs provide in the [...]

Predicting medical workforce supply and demand has historically been a challenging endeavor. The methodology consists of estimating the future medical provider workforce as well as modeling future demand for medical [...]

The physician assistant profession continues to shift away from primary care toward specialty care. Additionally, demand for PAs is increasing in relatively new specialties in the United States, creating new [...]

In the emergency department (ED) setting, physician assistants (PAs) and nurse practitioners (NPs) increasingly substitute for physicians. This installment of Research Corner reviews a quality of care comparison study, a [...]

As PA practice becomes established outside the United States, the experience of the first efforts to utilize PAs in a nation is sometimes documented by research efforts. This installment of [...]

As PA practice appears in an increasing number of settings and specialties, many of these emerging environments are then described by researchers. This installment of Research Corner reviews two articles [...]

As nonphysician providers become a larger proportion of the health care workforce, researchers become more interested in the impact these new providers have on the medical environment in which they [...]

An increasing number of publications investigate the use of PAs in specific practice settings. This installment of Research Corner reviews recent publications that address the utilization or the potential utilization [...]

Health care workforce researchers and educators have long been interested in factors related to workforce outcomes such as specialty and geographic location choices. This recent comprehensive study looks at factors [...]

Physician assistants are unique among health care professionals in that they have the ability to change clinical specialties throughout their careers. Health care workforce researchers have considered this characteristic of [...]

When the PA profession was established in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, studies were conducted and published to document the impact of PA practice. For [...]

The PA profession in the United States was established and shaped by federal funding. The November 2008 issue of Academic Medicine is dedicated to describing the role of the Ride [...]

Health care policy experts generally agree that the United States will face a medical provider shortage in the near future. In recent years, however, other developed nations have also recognized [...]

Health care policy experts generally agree that the United States faces a medical provider shortage in the near future. Recently there have been several articles addressing provider shortage predictions in [...]

Recently, the Physician Assistant Education Association (PAEA) celebrated the 40th anniversary of PA education with a special commemorative issue of the Journal of Physician Assistant Education. This issue contains a [...]

As the utilization of PAs in the US health care workforce increases, questions persist as to how the PA profession impacts the delivery of care. These three presentations from the [...]

Surveys of patient attitudes toward physician assistants began early in the profession's history. However, once the profession became established, the number of studies addressing the question of how patients regarded [...]

While the discussion over the value and impact of postgraduate PA training programs (PA residences) has persisted for at least three decades, recently the issue has taken on greater importance. [...]

As health care provider shortages appear on the horizon, questions persist as to how the PA profession fits into the future health care workforce. Four workforce-related presentations given at the [...]

From its inception, the physician assistant profession has been oriented toward improving medical care for the underserved. In a 1971 draft copy of a manuscript describing a community health care [...]

We are a young profession, and the list of issues that are important to our future is by nature long. On this list at any given time might be issues [...]

Physician assistant (PA)-focused research arose in response to the idea that an assistant to the busy physician could improve healthcare delivery. The process of answering questions about the profession has involved multiple approaches and various scholarly disciplines. In the course of this undertaking, what emerged were three stages of examination of PA behavior. The bibliographic span from this period contains about 2,400 studies that advance some notion of PA benefit to society. On the 50th anniversary of the PA profession, a question arises as to what research has shown. The answer is that PAs are providing care at significant levels of quality and quantity and their presence is enriching many challenges in healthcare delivery. In an era where demand for medical services is outstripping supply, the good idea born in the 1960s is emerging as a medical innovation domestically and globally.

While we may speculate as to why PAs choose the specialty they do, we really don't know much about the factors impacting this important choice at graduation or when a [...]