How Do I Become a Physician Assistant?
The Physician Assistant Department is dedicated to educating competent, caring physician assistants to practice primary care medicine emphasizing health promotion and disease prevention with the supervision of a physician and to providing physician assistants to serve all areas of society, particularly underserved and disadvantaged communities. Students study for 24 consecutive months. The first year focuses primarily on classroom and laboratory instruction and includes a research component to educate students in research issues pertinent to physician assistants. Some courses are taught by practicing physicians. The second, or “clinical,” year includes a variety of experiences in community teaching hospitals, clinics, and physician offices. The clinical experience requires rotations in the areas of pediatrics, surgery, emergency medicine, mental health, family medicine, women’s health, and internal medicine. Most rotations are located in Michigan or contiguous states. The clinical expe
Most programs require you to have some previous health care experience (e.g., nurse’s aide, home health care aide, or military medical experience) and some college courses. Most people who apply to a PA program have a college degree. College courses typically required before you apply to a PA program include English, math, biology, microbiology, chemistry, medical terminology, and psychology. There are currently 104 PA programs in the U.S. located at colleges, universities, medical schools, or teaching hospitals, and through the Armed Forces. A typical PA program is two years in length. The first year includes classroom lectures and lab sessions in anatomy, physiology (how the body works), microbiology, pharmacology (how medicines work), medical decision-making, and patient education. The second year is spent in clinical rotations with other health care professionals such as medical students, interns, and residents in areas of family and internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetri
At present the Physician Assistant Education Programs (PAEP) in Canada are taught at the Canadian Forces Medical Services School, the University of Manitoba, and McMaster University. PAEP includes one year of Didactic Classroom Medical Education and 12-14 months of Clinical Exposure and Rotations at hospitals and medical clinics throughout Canada. All programs meet the same standard and apply for accreditation from the Canadian Medical Association. There has been interest from several educational institutions within Canada to provide PAEP. In the US there are 142 accredited programs with approx. 12,000 students.
