Posted on

Physician assistant jobs increase by 72% in state

Physician assistant jobs increase by 72% in state

Share

JONESBORO — A national report shows that the number of physician assistants has catapulted upward since 2014 in the state, but the boom seems yet to have hit northeast Arkansas.

Northeast Arkansas doesn't have any schools that offer a program to be a physician assistant in the area. Arkansas didn't have programs for physician assistants until Harding added a degree for the profession in 2005. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences began offering its program in 2011.

Arkansas has the second to lowest number of physician assistants in the country, second only to Mississippi, according to the 2019 Statistical Profile of Certified Physician Assistants, annual report produced by the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants.

According to the report, there are 419 physician assistants in the state.

But both Arkansas and Mississippi had the most dramatic growth between 2014 and 2019 at 89.7% and 72.3%, respectively.

Susan Hanrahan, the dean of the College of Nursing and Health Professions at Arkansas State University, said because Arkansas universities have so recently added programs, it makes sense that the number would drastically increase.

Although she hasn't seen concrete numbers showing the breakdown of where physician assistants practice in the state, Hanrahan said she thinks they are concentrated, for the most part, in central and northwest Arkansas.

The National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants, an accrediting board for the accrediting board, defines physician assistants as 'licensed and certified health care professionals who practice medicine in partnership with doctors.'

Physician assistants can prescribe medicine and specialize in a variety of medicinal fields. To become physician assistants students have to attend two years of continued education.

'Certified PAs are not medical assistants, nor are they studying to become doctors — they are licensed and certified health care professionals…' according to the commission's website.

In 2020, the U.S. News & World Report ranked physician assistants as having the third best job in the nation.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also predicted that the profession will grow by 31% between 2018 and 2028, according to the report.

Hanrahan clarified that physician assistants are also not in the same profession as nurse practitioners. Arkansas State offers a degree that allows students to become nurse practitioners.

Nurse practitioners have already received a bachelor's degree in nursing.

Receiving a degree in the field allows them to expand their knowledge of the profession and choose a specific area of nursing in which to specialize.

Physician assistants may complete any bachelor's program and then go to medical school to be a physician assistant, similarly to the process of becoming a doctor.

While there is not a school for physician assistants in the area, with the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine and A-State's program, Hanrahan said there are a lot of student health workers in the area, many of whom later practice in Northeast Arkansas.

“So we’ve got a lot of health care providers as students working through Northeast Arkansas for sure,' Hanrahan said.

***

LAST NEWS
Scroll Up