Alicia K. Quella is a clinical associate professor, and chair/program director of the PA program at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, Minn. Roderick S. Hooker is an adjunct professor of health policy at Northern Arizona University in Phoenix. John M. Zobitz is a professor of mathematics, statistics, and computer science at Augsburg University. The authors have disclosed no potential conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise.
JAAPA. 2021 Jun 1;34(6):40-43. doi: 10.1097/01.JAA.0000750972.64581.b0.
Employment analyses demonstrate that physician assistants (PAs) exhibit role flexibility in US medicine. The next step in understanding this labor-shifting observation is to know at what career stage it first occurs.
Using matriculate data linked to the American Academy of PAs (AAPA) census survey data, a longitudinal analysis of seven graduate cohorts revealed that one-third of PAs changed specialty roles at least once during their first decade of employment.
From this series, it appears that new PAs spend about 3.4 years in their first job, on average, before they decide to move to another medical or surgical field. In examining PAs who changed their clinical role during this time period, 28% shifted from primary care to another medical or specialty role. Overall, the PA career movement to nonprimary care specialties increased substantially.
These findings support observations that PAs provide an adaptive role in a dynamic and changing medical workforce.
就业分析表明，医师助理（PA）在美国医学中表现出角色灵活性。了解这一劳动力转移观察结果的下一步是了解它最初发生在职业生涯的哪个阶段。
使用与美国医师助理协会（AAPA）普查调查数据相关的入学数据，对七个研究生队列进行的纵向分析显示，三分之一的 PA 在其就业的头十年中至少改变过一次专业角色。
从这个系列中可以看出，新的 PA 平均需要大约 3.4 年的时间才能完成他们的第一份工作，然后才决定转移到另一个医疗或外科领域。在检查在此期间改变临床角色的 PA 时，有 28% 的人从初级保健转向另一个医疗或专业角色。总体而言，PA 向非初级保健专业的职业转移大幅增加。
这些发现支持了这样的观点，即 PA 在动态和不断变化的医疗劳动力中提供了适应性角色。
