PA Programs in Indiana > IN Physican Assistant Information

Last Updated on December 15, 2023 by admin

How To Become A Physician Assistant In Indiana

Physician assistants are very appreciated in the health care industry, not just in Indiana and in the big cities like Indianapolis, but all over the United States of America. Nonetheless, becoming a certified physician assistant can take several years of hard work and training, as you need to obtain formal training to an ARC-PA approved physician assistant training program. In a nutshell, ARC-PA stands for the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistants, and these programs are the most appreciated ones given the fact that they rise to the highest standards of quality in terms of training. Today’s physician assistants work in a variety of settings, along with nurses, paramedics, or emergency medical technicians, providing high-quality medical care to those who truly need it.

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The average physician assistant training program takes around 26 months of full time study, and while the first year emphasizes on practical training and aims to help students get all the hands-on experience that they will benefit from later on, the final year emphasizes on clinical preparation and courses in research methods, pharmacology, emergency medicine, pathology, diagnosis, surgical technique, paediatrics and such.

At the end of the training program, physician assistants can choose to specialize in one of the many different fields of medicine, like paediatrics, internal medicine or surgery. In order to become a specialist physician assistant, one must complete an extra postgraduate training program, as well as to receive the certification provided by the NCCPA. All candidates must hold a PA-C certification, they must have at least two-years of experience and then complete a specialty certification program The specialty certification must be renewed every six years in the state of Indiana.

Physician Assistant In Indiana – Career Description

Indiana has no less than 36 institutions of higher education spread across the state, and most of the accredited physician assistant training programs and facilities are located in the Indianapolis city or around it. Having said that, physician assistants are skilled and experienced health care providers who are an essential part of the medical team, and who work under the close supervision of a skilled and licensed physician.

These professionals can not only prescribe medications and administer different treatments when required, but they can also monitor the symptoms of patients, they can educate both the patients and their families about different illnesses and how to cure or at least manage them, and so forth. Depending on their work environment, it is not uncommon for physician assistants to also perform various administrative tasks, such as handling the correspondence, scheduling appointments, maintaining and updating the patient medical records and such.

Generally speaking, physician assistants provide high quality medical services and they gather medical data about the patient’s general health condition. It is also the duty of the PA to interpret, to order and to perform different diagnostic tests searching for abnormal medical results, to note any progress and the effect of a certain treatment as well as to report back to the physician and such. Moreover, it is also the responsibility of the physician assistant to report back to physicians, to observe patients on house calls, to order therapy, to update charts and such.

Licensure And Certification For Physician Assistants In The State of Indiana

As you may know already, all physician assistants who plan to work in the state of Indiana (no matter if they will be working for a private physician’s office or within a local or a state hospital) must hold an active licensure and a certification. In order for that to happen, the physician assistant must firstly graduate from an ARC-PA approved physician assistant training program, and then they must meet all the requirements to sit for the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination, which is administered by the National Commission on the Certification of Physician Assistant, and which aims to evaluate both the surgical and the medical skills and knowledge of all applicants. At the same time, once you manage to get your PA-C designation by earning 100 continuing education credits every two years, you must also pass the recertification test in order to maintain your certification as PA active and valid.

Salary and Career Info

The interactive chart above is a visual representation of the annual salary of Indiana PA’s compared to the national annual salaries, all based on the latest May 2022 Occupational Employment Statistics figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Physician Assistant Schools In Indiana

There are several notable PA training programs in Indiana that you can opt for, and one of them is provided by the renowned Butler University in Indianapolis, which has both a Bachelor’s Degree and a Master’s Degree level training program for future physician assistants. In addition to this, equally efficient PA training programs are offered by the University of Saint Francis in Forth Wayne, the Indiana State University in Terre Haute, or the Indiana University School of Rehabilitation Sciences and Health in Indianapolis.