Performance of military-trained physician assistants on the physician assistant national certification examination

Although the first physician assistant (PA) program was born at a civilian academic institution, the impact of the military was immediately obvious as evidenced by the entire first class of PA students being Vietnam veteran Navy Corpsmen. Following initiation of the PA profession, the armed services established their own PA training programs that were eventually consolidated into a single interservice program in 1996. The mission of the Interservice PA Program is to produce high-quality PAs prepared to provide medical care in not only the traditional clinical arena but in the more unique situations seen in both peacetime and wartime military settings. PAs must complete an approved formal training program encompassing didactic and clinical training and pass a national certification examination to be licensed to practice. Pass rates are a key measure of the quality of a training program. We compared the national certification examination pass rates for our program with those of accredited civilian programs. Graduates of our program had a significantly higher pass rate and higher average scores than their civilian counterparts. These results are due to the strength of the program and faculty as well as the considerable hard work and dedication of the students who are drawn from a community that is, in many ways, non-traditional compared with other PA programs. These results demonstrate that the military training of PAs continues to provide high-quality health care providers who perform above their civilian-trained counterparts.