Physician Assistant Profession Strongly Connected to Military
March 9th, 2012 1 Min readOne of the most revealing moments in my early healthcare staffing career came at the American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA) convention, in 2011. Being fairly naïve about healthcare overall – partly due to lack of patient experience (I’m unreasonably healthy) – I wasn’t even sure what a Physician Assistant was, or did. After our friend Lisa Shock educated me a bit on the practice scope, I started noticing the prevalence of U.S. Armed Forces pins, hats, and flags on display at the convention; that’s when she explained the history of the PA profession to me.
According to Wikipedia: “Dr. Eugene A. Stead, Jr. of the Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina assembled the first class of Physician Assistants in 1965, composed of former U.S. Navy hospital corpsmen.” As a result, many returning medics and corpsmen who served in Vietnam found the profession to be the right transition into civilian practice.
Even today, as veterans return home, PAs are paying it back by understanding and addressing the physical and psychological toll so unique to military service. The AAPA provides a host of resources for PAs to build awareness of, and training for the support and care of veterans. See the Joining Forces campaign video below, or visit the AAPA website for more information.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yMZpXhicEc
CompHealth often partners with VA hospitals to provide jobs for Physician Assistants.
Author
