What are the requirements to become a physician assitant?

Perhaps you are looking to be a medical assistant? There are specific schools that provide training. Look into schools in your area that provide this training and call them up to see what their enrollment procedures are. Work such as this means making sure all the information in patient files are up-to-date, accurate and the insurance claims have been submitted on-time. It also includes checking the patient's blood pressure, weight and blood glucose levels.

Physician's assistant also could mean a nurse which requires going to a nursing school. You could start volunteering at a local hospital to see what this work is like.

You need to find out exactly what you mean by "physician's assistant" and then start from there.

Hi Torriece!

To become a Physician Assistant, you must complete an accredited Physician Assistant program, pass the Physician Assistant National Certifying Exam, then become licensed in the state you wish to practice.

You should look at schools that offer a PA program and apply to it as early as your Freshman year of college. Most PA programs require that you take at least 2 years of prerequisite coursework before beginning the PA program. As well as require that you have prior hands-on experience in the healthcare field. You should start looking at summer internships or volunteer programs that will give you this hands-on experience.

Here's a directory of schools that offer accredited PA programs: http://directory.paeaonline.org/

Also, check out the information on aapa.org (American Academy of Physician Assistants).

I hope this helps and best of luck!

-Stephanie

I agree with the above. If you truly mean a physician assistant working in United States then you can start your career with a bachelors degree. I know someone who makes a decent living in Las Vegas (primary care) and got the degree from university of Michigan. It usually involves two years of pre- med courses- biology, chemistry, math, physics, etc. I recommend volunteer work in hospital or clinic as well shadowing a PA, physician - family doctor so you can see abit of everything.

The masters tend to be for those who have bachelor degrees in other areas (I.e science, medicine, etc). That may sound weird for medicine but medicine is competitive and medical grads outside of US and canada have difficulty getting into training programs to become a fully qualified doctor in X speciality as obviously US med grads get first pick . To avoid wasting quality skills, they become PAs by getting a masters degree to became a PA. Masters is accelerated and usually 2 years.

In canada, we have weird rules where some places have PAs and in some places we have nurse practitioners that specialise in certain areas. After a science degree, some universities offer fast track one to 2 year programs to become a nurse and if you wish a NUrse practitioner .