BMJ 2002;325:485-487 ( 31 August )

Education and debate

Physician assistants in the United States

David E Mittman, physician assistant a, James F Cawley, professor, physican assistant b, William H Fenn, professor, physician assistant c. 

a Clinicians Group, 2 Brighton Road, Suite 300, Clifton, NJ 07012, USA, b School of Public Health and Health Services, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA, c College of Health and Human Services, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA

Correspondence to: D E Mittman dmittman@clingroup.com

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The United States has since the 1960s developed a cadre of physician assistants to work in primary care. They mainly work semi-autonomously in association with individual doctors, but an increasing number work in hospitals. They seem to be well accepted by both doctors and patients and can reasonably expect to take on any unfilled roles for which their training qualifies them

During the mid-1960s a new cadre of providers of medical care, physician assistants, was developed in the United States in an effort to relieve a nationwide shortage of doctors in primary care and to increase access to health care for people in underserved areas. The first trainees were highly skilled military paramedics. Today, there are more than 44 000 physician assistants in America. Internationally, the physician assistant model has been in place since 1992 in the Canadian forces, and a somewhat comparable profession exists in India. In different countries, however---Germany, . . . [Full text of this article]
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