Physician Assistant Requirements

Are you thinking of becoming a physician's assistant? This is a pretty new position in the medical field, and it deals with human illness along with general health care services. You will essentially be acting as a physician, and as long as the right supervision is present, you will be working in a physician's office. Along with being able to write prescriptions, you will be able to assist in surgery and even give advice on preventative health care. In many cases, patients will opt to see the PA over a regular physician.

Requirements

As of this writing, there are actually one hundred and forty nine accredited PA programs within the continental United States. When it comes to the requirements, a huge problem has been the fact that no one agrees on them. Obviously you must have passion for your job, which is to be expected. In the end, you cannot do your job if you do not have passion.

Knowledge of physiology, biochmeistry, and anatomy will be an absolute must if you plan to enter the field. If you have trouble with any of these, then you naturally are not going to do very well in a physician assistant program.

Before you can become a physician's assistant, you will need to attend a school, and the admissions committee will look at your credit hours, the credibility of your university, and even the difficulty of your coursework. It is generally accepted that a student should have at least four years in the field. The general preference is that you have experience in allied health, emergency services, nursing, medical volunteerism, and even trainer occupations. While you are not likely to be admitted without meeting the criteria, it is not impossible.

A high school diploma or GED goes hand in hand with all of the other requirements. You should consider maturity as well as you will need it to do your job effectively. If you want to be a PA, then you will need to be able to lead!

Because things are constantly changing in the field, you need to be very flexible. Naturally this is going to involve reading the latest medical texts, and of course making sure you're ready as soon as a new medical technology comes out. This will include pharmaceuticals among other things. Bearing that in mind, you may realize that it's not all fun and games. There are difficult patches and lots of study. If you can meet the physician assistant requirements, you will have a highly rewarding job in the medical field along with a chance to truly do some good.