X

Physician Assistant training begins as Clarkson starts new program

Posted 1/15/12

By CRAIG FREILICH POTSDAM -- Clarkson University begins educating its first class of physician assistant students this week in a move designed to diversify the university’s offerings into a …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

Physician Assistant training begins as Clarkson starts new program

Posted

By CRAIG FREILICH

POTSDAM -- Clarkson University begins educating its first class of physician assistant students this week in a move designed to diversify the university’s offerings into a high-growth field while helping to provide health care professionals for the North Country.

The first 17 students in the new program begin their studies this week and should have their degrees in about two and half years.

It’s an ambitious undertaking by the university, whose emphasis has been on engineering, science and technology since its founding. The existing physical therapist graduate program was Clarkson’s first serious foray into the medical field, and laid the groundwork for the physician assistant program.

Clarkson Pres. Anthony Collins said he is seeing quite a bit of excitement in the region about the new program. “It’s the right thing for the region,” he said.

“We anticipated 10 students in the first class and 17 have enrolled, so that will stretch us at the beginning but that’s okay,” Collins said.

Michael B. Whitehead, a long-time PA and administrator, will lead the program as the department chair.

Whitehead explained that Clarkson’s physical therapy program has been in existence for 10 years now, “and the university recognizes two main things about starting a program in the health sciences,” he said.

“First, is there a need in the community? It’s crystal clear that the North Country has a shortage of primary care health practitioners. So one of the first things they did was meet with the CEOs of all the local hospitals, and the people there echoed the challenge of recruiting and retaining physicians and physician assistants in this area.”

Clarkson’s recruiting materials explain that physician assistants are “health professionals licensed to practice medicine with physician supervision. PAs perform a comprehensive range of medical duties, from basic primary care to high-technology specialty procedures. PAs often act as first or second assistants in major surgery and provide pre- and postoperative care.

“In some rural areas where physicians are in short supply, PAs serve as the primary providers of health care, conferring with their supervising physicians and other medical professionals as needed and as required by law,” according to Clarkson’s web site pages on the program. “PAs can be found in virtually every medical and surgical specialty.”

PAs “prescribe medication, conduct physical exams, diagnose and treat illnesses, order and interpret tests, counsel on preventive health care and assist in surgery.”

“We start with the premise that a PA is on a team,” Whitehead said. “Every PA must have a supervising physician. Not every decision has to be approved, but if a question comes up, there will be someone you can call. They are not about doing heir own practice.”

For example, Whitehead talked about the kinds of surgery a PA might do – a simple procedure on the skin but no big surgery. “If a surgery requires a general anesthetic, no, a PA won’t do that. At the same time, while a surgeon is working on a cardiac patient, a PA might be harvesting a vein for a heart graft,” while the surgeon supervises.

“We’re not training PAs to take physicians’ jobs. They’re here to provide health care,” Whitehead said.

The program in the North Country is expected to help improve the medical care picture here, Whitehead said.

“One goal of this program is to recruit from the North Country because people who live or train in a place are more likely to stay,” he said. “That doesn’t mean a graduate can’t go to Memphis to practice, and we will get applicants from many places, not just New York State, but we have a demonstrated need here.”

The second thing the university relied on as they planned the program was that “Clarkson has proven its ability to do this kind of program with its physical therapy program.”

Whitehead said Collins and the trustees decided there is a need for the program here, “and in the nation as well, the need is quite high. They had to ask, ‘Do we have the resources or can we pull together the resources to start a program?’” With the experience of the physical therapy program they decided they could.

Another factor that undoubtedly went into the decision to start the program was the projected need for health practitioners of all sorts, expected to be in high demand for the near and middle terms.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics’s 2010-2011 outlook report, BLS said the need for physician assistants is expected to have grown by 39 percent between 2008 and 2018.

“Projected rapid job growth reflects the expansion of healthcare industries and an emphasis on cost containment, which results in increasing use of PAs by healthcare establishments,” BLS said.

The BLS also reported that a physician assistant in 2010 could start at between $70,000 and $122,000.

The students in Clarkson’s 28-month program will earn a master of science in physician assistant studies, a degree recognized by and registered with the state Education Department.

“The program got national accreditation in September. It took a year’s work. The application was 327 pages,” Whitehead said.

Whitehead notes that the approval from the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant, Inc. is provisional.

“That means we have shown we have the ability, the resources and the faculty to start and maintain a program,” Whitehead said. He said there is a huge book of things to do, and that when the provisional accreditation becomes continuing accreditation, “you’ve shown you did them.” The next major review by the commission begins in no more than three years.

Getting into a PA program is not a simple matter. A bachelor’s degree is required, with a concentration in sciences. Most programs require hundreds if not thousands of hours put in by the student in a clinical setting -- serving as a military medic, such as Whitehead did, and nurses, emergency medical technicians, lab or x-ray techs, athletic trainers, pharmacists, and physical therapists -- before admission, and sometimes before even applying.

Clarkson requires an applicant to have a bachelor’s with several science courses, plus credits in humanities, statistics, genetics and psychology, with minimum grade requirements.

Applicants must have a minimum of 500 hours of patient care experience by the time their applications are approved, or have a documented plan in place to accumulate those hours before classes start.

The 500-hour requirement is a practical one, Whitehead says. “Our sense is that 500 hours gives you the ability to see if health care is what you want to do for a career, and it shows us you have some capacity to work in health care. What you see in (television programs) ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and ‘House’ might be sexy, but really, it’s dirty, smelly hard work. We want to know if you can get on with it after someone throws up on your shoes.”

Whitehead says, “It’s rigorous training, all day, every day. The first year is like the first two years of medical school – very intense.”

Students train as generalists, with concentrations in several specialized areas such as internal medicine and emergency medicine, and at Clarkson students will have two electives in either orthopedics, oncology, urology, or an extra pediatrics course.

The cost of the program is about $12,500 per semester, plus other expenses such as medical equipment, clinic jackets, and housing and travel with clinical rotations.