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Physician assistants receive university degree

Two years ago, 23 experienced medical technicians walked into the CF Medical Services School (CFMSS) expecting to walk out as qualified physician assistants. One month ago, they did just that, but they also received an extra, unexpected degree – a Bachelor of Science from the University of Nebraska.

“We understand that the military cannot award academic degrees but we recognize the quality of the program and the training they provide,” says Dr. Mark Christiansen, associate director of the University of Nebraska’s physician assistant program. Dr. Christiansen attended the July 28 convocation to award the degree to the new graduates.

Although the first class of physician assistants graduated from CFMSS in 1984, the idea of physician assistants is still a fairly new concept in civilian clinics, having been recognized by the Canadian Medical Association as a health profession almost two decades later, in 2003.Only a handful of Canadian universities currently offer physician assistant programs and many of those programs are still in their infancy.

The University of Nebraska has had an arrangement with the US Armed Forces since 1972, granting degrees to military physician assistant students, and is pleased to extend that service to CF physician assistants. “By granting this degree to the program’s graduates,” says Dr.Christiansen,“we can contribute to them receiving the academic credit they deserve as well as supporting the growth of the physician assistant profession in Canada.”

Master Warrant Officer Dorothee Paradis, the physician assistant program director at CFMSS, confirms that a university degree for the students has been a part of Health Services’ vision for a while now. “It’s been quite a journey for physician assistants in the military,” she says. “It took some time for them to be recognized and more time to expand the program.Now, the awarding of this degree has further expanded it. It’s a real milestone for the students and the program.”

The school’s physician assistant program is one of the most rigorous in Canada, according to MWO Paradis.The two-year program is divided into three phases: a year of studying, a year of interning and three days of exhaustive testing.

Unlike university courses,where classes run only 16 hours a week, the CF physician assistant students are in classes 40 hours a week. After this first year of intensive coursework, they are sent out on clinical rotation to civilian hospitals where, under the supervision of a physician, they practise what they’ve learned. CFMSS has agreements with hospitals across the country from Montréal to Winnipeg to Vancouver.

While on their clinical rotations, the students are exposed to a number of specialties through their work with different physicians.They might spend four weeks working with a trauma surgeon, and two weeks each with an obstetriciangynaecologist, an ear, nose and throat specialist, and an anaesthesiologist, among others.

“Completing the physician assistant program involves a big sacrifice,” says MWO Paradis.“It’s a very intense program and the clinical phase could take them anywhere in the country, and away from their families, for a year.”

This sacrifice, however, now comes with a larger reward in the form of the degree.“Getting a university degree may have been a goal for some of these individuals that they never thought they’d achieve,” MWO Paradis says. “Some of them have families and they’d have to sacrifice a lot to be able to go to university for three or four years to earn that degree.”

After graduation, the physician assistants are posted throughout Canada to operational units. They could find themselves working in clinics alongside doctors, nurses and med techs, posted to a ship as the main provider of health care, or deployed to Afghanistan and working at a forward operating base as the primary clinician.