Tom Britt has more. Thirty-five years ago, Duke University Medical Center started what was then considered a radical new program, creating a new type of medical care provider who would serve as an assistant to the physician. These individuals would be trained to do much of the work of doctors, thereby allowing supervising physicians to see and treat more patients. The physician assistant program caught on, and there are now some 34,000 P.A.s across the country who have graduated from programs similar to Duke's. Justine Strand is the director of the Duke's physician assistant program.
Physician assistants do a great majority of the health care normally provided by physicians.
As an indication of how widely accepted P.A.s have become, doctors across North Carolina recently elected a physician assistant as president of the North Carolina Medical Board. I'm Tom Britt. Strand says physician assistants do their work under supervision of a practicing physician. We do not practice independently, even if we're located in remote, rural areas where the physician only visits once a week. But there is telecommunication, telephone conversation going on, so physician assistants do not function independently.