A degree in physician assistant studies was named No. 1 in a list of master's degrees that would provide the best opportunities, based on salary and employment, over the next decade, according to ABC News. The report, posted yesterday, focuses on Shane Tysinger, a former high school science teacher who decided to pursue a full-time career in ...

Physician assistants are increasingly more likely to head into specialties such as surgery and emergency medicine rather than primary care, according to the News & Observer. Researchers at the Duke University PA program studied the job choices of PAs from 1997 to 2006 and found that the number of PAs going into primary care declined to 41% ...

Thuy Ho, a 38-year-old resident of Lincoln, Nebraska, and mother of two children, is studying to become a physician assistant, a choice she made after immigrating to the U.S. from Vietnam in 2001. According to an article at Journalstar.com, U.S. medical licensing officials wouldn't allow Ho to practice in the States unless ...

Once again, physician assistant has been named one of the best careers, this time in a U.S. News & World Report article called ''America's Best Careers: 2010.'' Back in November, CNNMoney.com ranked physician assistant #2 in the 50 best jobs in America. Unfortunately, the U.S. News article makes a few mistakes (what is a ''physical ...

And so the health care reform debate continues... A recent article at Examiner.com champions PAs and NPs as a possible solution to the physician shortage. ''Primary physician shortage spurs search for alternatives,'' by DC public policy examiner Alan Portner, identifies PAs and NPs as the product of ''shorter, more intensive, ...

The long-awaited PAEA-AAPA physician assistant doctorate degree summit meeting finally begins March 25 in Atlanta. One interesting note, PAEA's online message board about doctorate degrees has a lot of talk about a PA-to-physician bridge program. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of the summit. Link

National Public Radio did a piece on the Doctor of Nursing Practice degree on All Things Considered on Feb. 22. No one wants to badmouth Florence Nightingale, but a new degree for nurses is causing bad blood between doctors and their longtime colleagues. The program confers the title of doctor on nurses, but some in the medical profession say ...

This is the 448th and final post to the ADVANCE Blog for PAs in 2008. Check back on Jan. 2 for the first blog post of 2009. Until then, here's a quick look back at some of the notable PA stories of the last year.  ***  JanuaryAnnals of Family Medicine publishes a study that concludes, “Family practices employing ...

On the American Academy of Physician Assistants Web site today is a two-page AAPA News article about the U.S. Army's PA clinical doctorate program by Doug Scott. In October 2007, Major Leonard Gruppo announced to the five PAs attending the U.S. Army Emergency Medicine Residency Program that when they graduated the following December, they ...

I did not see this when it was originally published, but in its Dec. 20, 2007, issue the Fort Sam Houston News Leader published a good article about the graduation of the first class from the U.S. Army's clinical doctorate program for PAs in emergency medicine. The article begins on page three and includes a photo of the first four DScPA ...