Physician Assistants
The AMA’s position on physician assistants (PAs) is that they should be regulated by state medical boards to best reflect the supervisory nature of the relationship between physician assistants and physicians.
Physician assistant programs usually run about two years long, or perhaps two and a half. Physician assistants have no residency-training requirement, in contrast to physicians’ training which includes four years at a medical school.
Physician assistants get only about 2,000 hours of supervised clinical practice in their master’s level training. By comparison, between medical school clinical rotations and residency training, physicians amass between 12,000 and 16,000 hours of patient-care experience.
The AMA has articles and updates on physicians assistants and their role in health care.
