A cooperative education program for nurse practitioners/physician's assistants

Traditionally, nurse practitioners and physicians' assistants have been trained separately. Despite similarities in curriculum and graduate practice, there has been little or no articulation between their training programs or professional organizations. In 1977 the Family Nurse Practitioner Program at the School of Medicine, University of California, Davis, and the Primary Care Associate Program at Stanford University Medical Center merged clinical curricula. In this article the authors describe the cooperative educational venture and evaluate its first year.