Hands down, PA Week is one of our favorite weeks of the year. It recognizes the PA profession and all that PAs contribute to our nation’s health. Fun fact: before it was a weeklong event, National PA Day was first celebrated on October 6, 1987, in honor of the first graduating class from the Duke University PA program. (October 6th is also the birthday of the founder of the profession, Dr. Eugene Stead, Jr.)
We all know that PAs are pretty amazing, but here are some facts about the profession (and your favorite PAs!) that you might not know. For example...
Did you know?
• There are more than 123,000 PAs working across the country—and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the profession is expected to grow 37 percent between 2016 and 2036.
• There are more than 250 PA programs, which educate students at the master’s degree level. These programs are an average of 27 months long and require students to complete rigorous classroom coursework.
• Additionally, PA students complete 2,000 hours of clinical rotations in a broad spectrum of specialties, including family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, general surgery, emergency medicine, and psychiatry.
• Trained as medical generalists, PAs perform many of the same tasks as physicians, and know how to treat the “whole patient.”
• PAs are well-positioned to treat our nation’s most vulnerable populations, including those in rural and underserved communities.
• PAs are especially critical in the world of skilled long-term care and wound healing, where they provide essential care and treatment for vulnerable populations in nursing homes, helping to heal wounds, educate caregivers, and promote better health outcomes.
PAs are on the front lines. Always innovative and always flexible, PAs are the solution to some of our system’s biggest problems. To all the amazing PAs we have the privilege to work with: THANK YOU!
Skilled Wound Care is a mobile surgical practice committed to transforming the chronic wound care model in nursing facilities. Wound care experts make weekly bedside visits to patients in long-term care facilities, avoiding transfers to hospitals or clinics. Our expert physicians give patients the most up-to-date and effective wound treatments, and educate facility staff on how to help patients continue to heal quickly and effectively between visits. This model of collaborative care allows SWC’s physicians to improve patients’ lives and health outcomes, to empower nursing staff, and to raise public awareness. Skilled Wound Care, along with its nurse and nursing home partners, is working every day to positively transform traditional nursing home wound care.