PA-to-Physician Bridge Revisited
I have been covering the PA profession for more than 11 years. When I first started, people talked a little bit about the possibility of a PA-to-physician bridge program.
It always made a lot of sense to me. Why should PAs with years of medical education and clinical experience have to start at the very beginning of medical school alongside recent college graduates with zero clinical experience?
But at the time there was so little support for it and so much opposition to it that I concluded it would never happen, and I haven't heard much more about it in the last 10 years except for a popular thread about the issue on the online PA Forum.
In January, after reading yet another article about the critical shortage of physicians, I wondered on this blog whether it was time to revisit the possibility of a PA-to-physician bridge. I expected people to quickly shoot the idea down, but I put it out there.
To my surprise, support for the idea was overwhelming. I have heard very few negative views on the idea from the PA community.
When I spoke with PA experts for an article in the April print issue of ADVANCE about the future of the PA profession, they agreed that an accelerated PA-to-physician bridge program is a good idea. Several even thought it would happen in the next few years.
I'm still not convinced that a breakthrough on this topic is imminent. But a significant minority of PAs is interested and much of the opposition seems to have faded over the last 10 years. Stay tuned ...