Physician assistants as servant leaders: meeting the needs of the underserved

The purpose of this study was to determine if the level of servant leader characteristics in clinically practicing physician assistants (PAs) in underserved populations differed from PAs serving in other locales.

Five subscales of servant leadership: altruistic calling, emotional healing, wisdom, persuasive mapping, and organizational stewardship, were measured in a quantitative study of clinically practicing PAs using a self-rating survey and a similar survey by others rating the PA.

Of 777 PAs invited, 321 completed the survey. On a scale of 1 to 5, mean PA self-ratings ranged from 3.52 (persuasive mapping) to 4.05 (wisdom). Other raters' scores paired with the self-rated PA scores were comparable in all subscales except wisdom, which was rated higher by the other raters (4.32 by other raters, 4.01 by PAs, P= .002). There was no significant difference in the measures of servant leadership reported by PAs serving the underserved compared to PAs serving in other populations. Servant leader subscales were higher for PAs compared to previous studies of other health care or community leader populations.

The results found that the PA population studied had a prominent level of servant leadership characteristics that did not differ between those working with underserved and nonunderserved populations.