A practice analysis is a tool that bridges knowledge and clinical performance into a format that permits assessment. For physician assistants (PAs), this contributes to a psychometrically sound examination administered by the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA). The 2004 practice analysis of 5,282 completed PA surveys (13.4% out of 39,517 sent) was representative of the PA population in years experience, geographical distribution, and practice specialty. The survey revealed 8 content domains with formulating the most likely diagnosis, basic science concepts, and pharmaceutical therapeutics as the three skills needed for most scenarios. The data were also analyzed by patient acuity (acute limited, chronic progressive, life-threatening emergency). As a result, NCCPA's test item pool and content blueprint for assessing core knowledge of American PAs on the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination (PANCE) and the Physician Assistant National Recertifying Examination (PANRE) has been enhanced.
Attitudes, expectations, and behaviors vary across generational cohorts, which have implications for the physician-PA team. Among physician assistants, generational differences are further amplified by a dramatic shift in gender ratios, which have grown increasingly pronounced with each new generation.
Physician assistants (PAs) have provided cost effective, high quality care in the United States for more than 40 years. There is a growing international interest in utilizing PAs for a variety of pressing health care needs. This pilot study compared the performance of PA students trained in the United States to those trained in the United Kingdom on a core biomedical science knowledge examination using multiple choice questions developed by the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA). The study found that despite differing educational models and health systems, the students performed similarly. While rigorous statistical analyses were not possible given the small sample sizes, the study provides a promising indication that there is an international common core of biomedical science knowledge. Repeated studies and the expansion of the pilot to other countries will provide more generalizability and statistical support to establish whether there is an assessable, global core of PA biomedical science knowledge that could become one component of locally determined national standards for PAs.
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