Q&A: Patrick Auth on the Importance of Physician Assistants

Each year, between Oct. 6–12, the American Academy of Physician Assistants celebrates National Physician Assistant Week.

Started in 1987 as Physician Assistant Day on Oct. 6, the event expanded to a full week recognizing and celebrating the contributions of physician assistants to American health care.

Drexel’s physician assistant program started in 1971 and currently has an enrollment of 209 students. A relatively new occupation in the medical field, physician assistants work on teams with physicians and provide care such as physical examinations, diagnose and treat illness, order and interpret lab tests, prescribe medicine and assist in surgeries.

Patrick Auth, PhD, is department chair of the Drexel College of Nursing and Health Professions’ Physician Assistant Department. He leads by example, not only in the classroom, but outside it in serving the community.

To celebrate Physician Assistant Week, students from the department took casseroles to feed the homeless at St. John’s Hospice in Center City and performed blood pressure tests. The relationship between Drexel’s Physician Assistant program and St. John’s has been going strong for 20 years, now, in no small part thanks to Auth’s efforts.

Auth shares with DrexelNow what he feels the future holds for physician assistants and what makes Drexel’s program stand out.

• How important are physician assistants to the health care system?

Physician assistants (PAs) are critical. The primary goal of our program is to develop graduates who are competent, caring physician assistants, possessing the skills of lifelong learning needed to incorporate new knowledge and methods into their practices and to adapt to a changing medical environment.

The Affordable Care Act includes a number of provisions that will directly influence and possibly benefit the PA profession.

As a result of numerous provisions designed to expand health insurance coverage, millions more Americans will now be insured, with the number likely to continue to increase for years to come. While it’s beneficial to have more people with health coverage, this new wave of health care consumers will exacerbate the already increasing physician shortage.

The Affordable Care Act also recognizes PAs as primary care providers and provides for scholarships and loan forgiveness programs to help fund the training of 600 new PAs.

Another provision of the Affordable Care Act that has already, and will continue, to affect PAs is the development of new payment models such as accountable care organizations and patient-centered medical homes, which focus heavily on the coordination of care. PAs will play a large part in this coordination, as the health workforce continues to adopt an increasingly team-oriented approach to care provision.

• What makes Drexel’s Physician Assistant program distinct from others?

Since 2010, Drexel students maintain a Physician Assistant National Certifying Exam (PANCE) pass rate above the national average.

Our students are committed to improving health care delivery in rural and urban medically underserved areas where their presence is most needed.

As such, 100 percent of the physician assistant students from the class of 2015 had a clinical experience in a rural and/or urban underserved area. On top of that, since 2012, all of our students who eventually graduated have conducted health education presentations in those underserved areas.

We also strive to place at least 30 percent of our graduates in primary care settings, and since 2013, 43 percent of our graduates have gone on to practice in those settings.

Our students are also learning from faculty who have roles in physician assistant leadership, whether that’s at the college, university, state or national level.

• What do you think goes into being a good physician assistant?

You need to be committed to being a lifelong learner. 

You also have to have a passion to serve patients in the community, especially the underserved areas and patients who are under-insured.

And you need to have a commitment to building communities through using our knowledge and experience.