Four articles that review the impact and roles for physician assistants in hospital-based practice settings are reviewed.

The increasing number of nonphysician health care providers is prompting researchers to study their impact on the health care workforce.

The studies discussed in this installment of Research Corner illustrate the growing demand for PAs in the American health care workforce across a variety of settings.

The student selection process and curriculum are important in producing primary care physicians and physicians willing to serve in rural and underserved settings. Public and rural schools do a better job of producing primary care, rural, and health center physicians.

Recent studies indicate that specialty mobility is a strong factor for choosing a career as a physician assistant. Most PAs exercise this option at least once during their career.

Scotland recently conducted a pilot project utilizing physician assistants in which the impact of PAs was carefully studied, analyzed, and reported in great detail.

The PA profession in the United States was established and shaped by federal funding. The November 2008 issue of Academic Medicine is dedicated to describing the role of the Title VII Training in Primary Care Medicine and Dentistry Program and the Title VII diversity programs in the growth and development of primary care medicine and dentistry. This historical review is timely given the reemergence of severe primary care provider shortages.

Health care policy experts generally agree that the United States will face a medical provider shortage in the near future. In recent years, however, other developed nations have also recognized emerging health care provider shortages; and in many of these countries, the establishment of a PA-like profession is a serious option. Recent data suggest that worldwide physician shortages—and thus the establishment of additional PA-like professions outside the United States—are likely.

Since the PA profession has historically contributed a high proportion of its graduates to medical shortage areas, future shortage predictions have significant implications for the profession if these historical trends continue.

Recently, the Physician Assistant Education Association (PAEA) celebrated the 40th anniversary of PA education with a special commemorative issue of the Journal of Physician Assistant Education. This issue contains a generous collection of articles that describe many aspects of the PA profession in historical context.

The consistency of PA-driven care was utilized to develop a protocol for assessing risk of VTE for surgical patients, which led to significant improvement in compliance with published guidelines.

This study suggests that trauma centers are increasingly hiring and making effective use of PAs and NPs—and that jobs for PAs will grow in this area.

This study's findings suggest that rural PAs are somewhat better than urban PAs at identifying and treating skin diseases, in part because they do more of it.

Advanced practice clinicians can treat trauma patients, safely filling the void left by decreased availability of surgical residents.

What do PAs do, how skilled are they in performing these activities, and how important are these activities? For many professions, a practice analysis provides the link between examination content and real-world performance.

The Utah Medical Education Council (UMEC) was created in 1997 by legislative statute and was charged with assuring that the state maintain an adequate clinical workforce. In order to fulfill this charge, the UMEC conducts surveys of select clinician professions in order to assess the adequacy of the state's clinician workforce.

Compared to urban visits, rural visits are relatively more likely to be made to PAs than to physicians. Thus, PAs still tend to fill the rural gap where physician shortages are more prevalent.

Elderly persons comprise only 13% of the United States population, yet they account for one third of all prescription drugs used. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that in a 2003 survey of 17,685 Medicare-eligible older persons, respondents with three or more chronic conditions (73%) take five or more medications regularly.

Subcutaneous emphysema can have many different causesa challenge because a precise diagnosis and correction of underlying pathology are required for proper treatment.

Objective: To determine how satisfied older American consumers are with physician assistant (PA) and nurse practitioner (NP) care.