During our education, PAs are trained to diagnose, treat, and prescribe, and they are often educated alongside physicians in medical schools, academic medical centers, and residencies.
The typical student entering a PA student has a bachelor's degree and approximately four years of healthcare experience, and the average PA program takes 26 months to complete. Nearly all programs award Master's degrees.
PA students take nearly 580 hours of clinical medicine, more than 400 hours in basic sciences, 175 hours in behavioral sciences, and more than 75 hours in pharmacology.
After classroom study, PA students complete a minimum of 2,000 hours of clinical rotations in both outpatient clinics and in hospitals.
Today, there are 196 accredited PA programs graduating 8,900 new PAs each year, and admission to them is extremely competitive. As a proof point to the profession's growth, there were only 54 programs in 1991.
Prior to practicing medicine, a PA must get licensed in their state. Every state requires the same criteria for PA licensure: graduation from an accredited PA program and passage of the certification exam administered by the National Commission on Certification of PAs (NCCPA).
To maintain national certification, PAs must complete 100 hours of continuing medical education every two years and pass a national recertification exam every 10 years.
And in practice, a PA's scope grows over time with clinical experience.