What is a Physician Assistant (PA)?

Physician assistants are health care professionals licensed to practice medicine with a physician's supervision. Within the physician/PA relationship, physician assistants exercise autonomy in medical decision making and provide a broad range of diagnostic and therapeutic services. The clinical role of physician assistants includes primary and specialty care in medical and surgical practice settings in rural and urban areas. Physician assistant practice is centered on patient care and may include educational, research and administrative activities.

Duties performed by physician assistants include:

Evaluation - Obtaining medical histories and performing physical examinations,

Monitoring - Assisting the physician in developing and implementing patient management plans, recording progress notes in office-based and inpatient health care settings.

Diagnostics - Performing and interpreting (at least to the point of recognizing deviations from the norm) common laboratory, radiologic, cardiographic, and other routine diagnostic procedures used to identify pathophysiologic processes.

Therapeutics - Performing routine procedures such as injections, immunizations, suturing and wound care, managing simple conditions produced by infection or trauma, participating in the management of more complex illness and injury, and taking initiative in performing evaluation and therapeutic procedures in response to life-threatening situations.

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