A hospitalist postgraduate training program for physician assistants

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Physician Assistant Training
• Hospital Medicine

Background:

• Hiring physician assistants (PAs) is a strategy for hospitalist groups to expand physician services.
• A significant challenge is the scarcity of PAs with prior hospitalist experience.
• Current PA education often emphasizes primary care and outpatient settings, leaving limited hospital-based experience.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the difficulty in recruiting experienced PAs for hospitalist positions.
• To establish a novel postgraduate training program for PAs in hospital medicine.
• To create a replicable model for PA training in hospital medicine.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of a 12-month postgraduate PA fellowship in Hospital Medicine.
• Curriculum based on the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) Core Competencies.
• Program includes 12 one-month clinical rotations and formal didactic instruction, plus supplementary teaching modules.

Main Results:

• The program is the first reported postgraduate PA hospitalist fellowship offering a certificate of completion.
• It provides comprehensive training across various aspects of hospital medicine.
• The model is adaptable for both academic and community-based institutions.

Conclusions:

• The postgraduate PA training program effectively addresses the need for skilled hospital medicine providers.
• This fellowship model can be adopted by various healthcare institutions.
• The demand for trained PAs in hospital medicine is expected to rise with the increasing need for hospitalists.