Military Veteran Matriculation in US Physician Associate/Assistant Programs

This study aims to determine whether veterans have differential access to physician associate/assistant (PA) education by examining likelihood of matriculation relative to nonveteran peers. We explore associations between veteran status and likelihood of matriculation for change over time and whether effects differ among active duty versus non-active-duty applicants.

Multivariate logistic regression was used to investigate associations between self-identified military status and likelihood of PA program matriculation in five Centralized Applicant Services for Physician Assistants admissions cycles (2012-2013, 2014-2015, 2016-2017, 2018-2019, 2020-2021). Models controlled for age, sex, race/ethnicity, patient care experience hours, total undergraduate grade point average, and number of applications submitted and applied a Bonferroni correction for alpha inflation.

Veteran applicant numbers were small across the study time frame but increased from 2012 (n = 708) to 2020 (n = 978), representing a 38% increase over the lookback period. Despite growth, the proportion of veterans in the matriculant pool has decreased from 4.2% in 2012 to 3.0% in 2020. In unadjusted models, military status was not strongly associated with odds of matriculation. In adjusted models, both veteran and active-duty status were associated with higher odds of matriculation, although this increase was not statistically significant at the 0.005 level for applicants on active-duty.

Military veterans and active-duty military personnel have higher likelihood of matriculation into US PA programs relative to nonveteran peers. The proportion of veterans in the matriculant pool has decreased over time. This suggests that while PA programs seems to value previous military experience, further efforts to evaluate and address barriers to military veterans in applying for admissions is needed.