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Published on: March 7, 2019
Retention and change in PAs' first years of employment
Alicia K Quella1, Roderick S Hooker, John M Zobitz
1Alicia K. Quella is a clinical associate professor, and chair/program director of the PA program at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, Minn. Roderick S. Hooker is an adjunct professor of health policy at Northern Arizona University in Phoenix. John M. Zobitz is a professor of mathematics, statistics, and computer science at Augsburg University. The authors have disclosed no potential conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise.
Objective:
Employment analyses demonstrate that physician assistants (PAs) exhibit role flexibility in US medicine. The next step in understanding this labor-shifting observation is to know at what career stage it first occurs.
Methods:
Using matriculate data linked to the American Academy of PAs (AAPA) census survey data, a longitudinal analysis of seven graduate cohorts revealed that one-third of PAs changed specialty roles at least once during their first decade of employment.
Results:
From this series, it appears that new PAs spend about 3.4 years in their first job, on average, before they decide to move to another medical or surgical field. In examining PAs who changed their clinical role during this time period, 28% shifted from primary care to another medical or specialty role. Overall, the PA career movement to nonprimary care specialties increased substantially.
Conclusions:
These findings support observations that PAs provide an adaptive role in a dynamic and changing medical workforce.
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