PA Workforce Issues

The PA profession continues to shift away from primary care toward specialty care. Demand for PAs is increasing in relatively new specialties in the United States, creating new employment opportunities in these areas of practice.

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.

On January 30, 2006, the American College of Physicians (ACP) released a highly publicized report that predicted "the impending collapse of primary care."1 With many primary care physicians heading toward retirement and fewer young physicians choosing to go into primary care, our nation may well face an impending shortage of primary care physicians. While the ACP has proposed several reforms to help avert the impending crisis, it did not address the role of physician assistants and other nonphysician clinicians (NPCs) in their recent report.