Career

Physician Assistant

A physician assistant is a licensed clinician who examines patients, figures out what is wrong, prescribes medicine and does hands-on procedures like stitching wounds, working on a team with a supervising physician.

O*NET profile

Median pay (US)

$135,880

2025 · $65.33 an hour

O*NET source

Job outlook

Much faster than average

O*NET's band for this category is 7% or higher, 2024-2034

O*NET source

To get in the door

Graduate or professional degree

Most of these occupations require graduate school.

Openings a year

12,000

projected, nationally

O*NET source

What the day actually looks like

Take the patient's history, do the physical exam, then order and read diagnostic tests such as x-rays and blood work (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook).
Make the diagnosis and decide the treatment plan with the supervising physician, and prescribe medication. O*NET lists the core task as making tentative diagnoses and decisions about management and treatment.
Do procedures with your hands: stitching wounds, setting broken bones, giving immunizations. In surgical specialties a PA may close incisions and manage care before, during and after an operation, which can mean standing for long stretches (BLS).
Teach patients and families how to manage a condition, then chart the visit. Charting is the part of the job AI tools are aimed at first, which is covered in the AI section below.
Work about a 40-hour week on average, with schedules that may include nights, weekends, holidays and on-call. NCCPA reports a mean of 39.2 hours per week and a median of 40 for PAs in their principal clinical position.

Skills you need first

Chemistry, and more of it than you might expect. Lake Erie College requires General Chemistry I and II with labs plus Organic Chemistry with lab. Mount Union requires Principles of Chemistry with lab plus Organic Chemistry I with lab. Case Western and Baldwin Wallace did not print an itemized prerequisite list on the pages read, so ask those two programs directly.
Biology, then anatomy and physiology I and II with labs, plus microbiology with lab. These appear on the Lake Erie College and Mount Union prerequisite lists.
Statistics or biostatistics. College algebra is also required at Lake Erie College.
Psychology and English composition. Mount Union additionally requires medical terminology.
Grades that hold up under a selective review. Published minimums run from 3.0 cumulative and science GPA (Case Western, Lake Erie, Mount Union) to 3.5 (Baldwin Wallace), and admitted averages run higher than the minimums.
Comfort being close to people who are sick or hurt, and proof of it, and the hour requirements differ enormously. Case Western requires a minimum of 1,000 hours of direct, hands-on patient care completed before you apply. Lake Erie College requires at least 250 hours of patient care experience, with at least 24 of those 250 hours coming from shadowing a licensed PA. Mount Union requires 40 shadowing hours, due by the time you start rather than when you apply, and up to 20 of them may be virtual. Baldwin Wallace requires none.

How long people stay

PAs mostly stay, but a real share are strained. NCCPA's 2025 Statistical Profile of Board Certified PAs (data as of December 31, 2025; 168,768 of 201,038 certified PAs responded, an 83.9 percent response rate) reports that 31.8 percent of PAs have one or more symptoms of burnout. Of the six largest practice settings, burnout was highest in community health centers at 40.3 percent and lowest in office-based private practice at 29.3 percent. In the same report, 8.6 percent said they intend to leave their principal clinical position within 12 months, up from 7.8 percent in 2021, and of those, 61.5 percent were seeking another clinical PA position rather than leaving the profession, while 49.8 percent named professional burnout and 45.3 percent named insufficient wages for the workload. A peer-reviewed study of 122,360 PAs using 2023 NCCPA data (Kozikowski A, Bruza-Augatis M, Maddux S, Puckett K, Morton-Rias D, Goodman J, Health Affairs Scholar, volume 3, issue 9, September 2025, open access found 34.2 percent reported at least one burnout symptom, ranging from 42.2 percent in emergency medicine to 26.1 percent in dermatology. In that study, working more than 50 hours a week was associated with a 12.1 percentage point higher probability of burnout compared with PAs working 30 hours or fewer, and satisfaction with work-life balance was associated with a 25.1 percentage point lower probability. BLS adds that the work "can be both physically and emotionally demanding," with much of the day spent standing or walking and extended standing in operating rooms. Average career length, typical years in practice and retirement age for PAs are not verified and are not reported on this page.

Where it is needed, and the different ways to do it

Demand is real and growing, but read it carefully. BLS projects employment of physician assistants to grow 20 percent from 2024 to 2034, much faster than average. BLS attributes this to more older patients, more chronic disease such as diabetes, and the spread of team-based care, noting that PAs "can be trained more quickly than physicians." The profession is scaling: NCCPA counts 201,038 board certified PAs at the end of 2025, past 200,000 for the first time, collectively caring for 12 million patients a week (2025 Statistical Profile of Board Certified PAs). What this page will not claim is that PAs themselves are in short supply. The shortage discussed in healthcare is largely a physician shortage that PAs help cover, and the federal workforce analysis that would settle the PA side of the question could not be opened to verify it, so no shortage figure is published here. A student should hear this as strong projected hiring paired with real competition for program seats, not as a guaranteed shortage of PAs. Baldwin Wallace, for example, enrolls classes of about 35 to 40 and reports recent admitted cohorts averaging 3.83 to 3.91 cumulative GPA.

Hospital floors and inpatient teams

The single largest setting. NCCPA reports 42.8 percent of PAs name a hospital as their principal practice setting in 2025. That percentage is a share of PAs working in a principal clinical position, roughly 141,000 people, not of all 201,038 certified PAs, so do not multiply it against the bigger number. NCCPA says the hospital share has increased and now exceeds the share in office-based private practice.

Office-based private practice and clinics

36.1 percent of PAs in a principal clinical position per NCCPA 2025. BLS counts the workforce by industry instead and puts 52 percent of PA jobs under offices of physicians, so the two sources are measuring different things and will not match. Either way it is where most outpatient medicine happens.

The operating room

Surgery subspecialties account for 18.3 percent of PAs in a principal clinical position, with general surgery adding 3.0 percent (NCCPA 2025). NCCPA's own summary calls primary care the leading practice area at 21.4 percent, followed by surgery subspecialties at 18.3 percent, so surgery is the largest single line item but not the largest area overall. BLS notes a surgical PA may close incisions and provide care before, during and after an operation, and that PAs in operating rooms often stand for extended periods.

Emergency departments and urgent care

Emergency medicine is the specialty for 10.4 percent of PAs in a principal clinical position, and urgent care is the setting for 5.5 percent (NCCPA 2025). This is the fastest-paced version of the job and also the hardest on people: emergency medicine PAs reported the highest burnout rate of any specialty at 42.2 percent (Health Affairs Scholar, September 2025,.

Primary care, community health and rural clinics

21.4 percent of PAs practice in a primary care specialty in 2025, down from 23.7 percent in 2021. Community health centers account for 2.8 percent of settings and rural health clinics 1.3 percent, while 93.5 percent of PAs live in urban areas (NCCPA 2025; all shares are of PAs in a principal clinical position). BLS notes that in some rural and medically underserved communities a PA may be the primary care provider at a clinic where a physician is present only one or two days a week. The rural access story is genuine, but it is a small slice of the workforce.

Psychiatry and behavioral health

2.4 percent of PAs practice in psychiatry, up 0.4 percentage points since 2021, one of the larger proportional gains in the NCCPA 2025 specialty table. BLS lists psychiatry among the specialties PAs work in.

AI and this career

exposure: moderate

The paperwork half of this job is the part being automated first. The hands-and-license half is not. AAPA's own policy white paper, released October 21, 2025, puts ambient AI scribes and AI care coordination in the accelerate-first category and puts AI-assisted diagnostics in the harder, later category. What AI does not touch is the physical exam, the procedures, the prescription signature and the state license behind it. BLS still projects 20 percent employment growth from 2024 to 2034, and does not mention AI in that projection. The credible near-term risk is not job loss, it is that the minutes AI saves get filled with more patients instead of more time per patient. One honesty note for families: an earlier draft of this page carried nine specific percentages about how many PAs use AI today. Those came from a single vendor press release we could not confirm exists, with no stated sample size, so they were removed rather than repaired. Better to show you nothing than a number we cannot stand behind.

Tasks likely to change

Charting. Ambient AI listens to the visit and hands back a draft note the PA edits and signs. AAPA, HealthFORCE and West Health rank ambient AI scribes as low risk and high impact and want them accelerated first (AAPA white paper announcement, October 21, 2025).
The cognitive weight of a clinic day may drop measurably. In a 2025 crossover study of 40 ambulatory providers at one academic medical center, ambient AI documentation lowered NASA-TLX composite task load by 60.7 percent, with mental demand down 64.6 percent (Hudson TJ et al., Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Digital Health, 2025,. Small, single-site, and the paper does not state whether PAs were among the 40, so treat it as promising rather than settled.
Care coordination and the administrative tail. AAPA's white paper names AI-supported triage, referrals and automated follow-up workflows as the second priority, aimed at duplicative tests and missed referrals rather than at diagnosis.

Tasks that stay human

The hands. Stitching a wound, setting a broken bone, closing an incision, standing through an operation, palpating an abdomen that is tender in the wrong place. BLS lists these as core duties and none of them are text tasks.
The license and the legal responsibility. All states and the District of Columbia license PAs, and how much physician supervision is required is set by state law, not by software (BLS). AAPA's argument is in fact the reverse of replacement: it asks policymakers to modernize practice laws so PAs can use AI to the full extent of their training.
The conversation. Telling a family what a diagnosis means and what to do next. BLS lists educating and counseling patients and families as a core duty, and explaining who does what on a care team is a human problem software does not solve.
The reason the job is growing. BLS ties the 20 percent projection to more older patients and more chronic disease. AAPA CEO Lisa M. Gables states directly in the October 2025 white paper release that "AI alone won't fix workforce shortages."

What physician assistant work may look like

A PA's day ten years from now may open the way it opens today, with a patient list and a stethoscope, but the typing may have moved into the background. An ambient system may listen to the visit and hand back a draft note the PA reads, corrects and signs, and the signature is likely where the responsibility still sits. Before walking into the room the PA may skim a one-screen synthesis of a long chart instead of scrolling through it, and referrals, prior authorizations and follow-up calls may already be queued. What probably does not change is the part that needs a body in the room: the tender abdomen, the wound that needs closing, the parent who needs to hear it in plain words and be believed. The likelier risk is not that the job disappears, since BLS still projects 20 percent growth, but that the saved minutes get spent on more patients rather than more attention per patient, and that a PA who cannot spot a confident, fluent, wrong AI draft becomes the weak link. So the PAs who do best may be the ones who learn to audit the machine as carefully as they learn to read an x-ray, and who keep the skills the machine has no way to perform.

Sources:[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Open questions on this career

Cleveland-area pay is not shown. The BLS metro wage table returned nothing for the Cleveland-Elyria area, so Ohio statewide figures are used instead.
Career length is not shown. No source was found for the average years a PA stays in the profession or a typical retirement age. NCCPA publishes only a 12-month intent-to-leave figure.
The ambient-AI cognitive load study is a single site with 40 participants and does not say whether any of them were PAs. Read the 60.7 percent figure as preliminary, not as an established effect for physician assistants.

Pay and outlook come from O*NET, the US Department of Labor's occupation site, and every figure links back to it. We do not publish tuition or cost figures here: those change often, so use each school's own page and phone number below. Tell Mr. Mendoza if anything looks wrong.

See somebody do it

Physician and Anesthesiologist Assistants Career VideoCareerOneStop (sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor). This is the video BLS itself links from the Physician Assistants OOH page. Verified live, channel confirmed as CareerOneStop.Why choose the Physician Assistant Program at BWBaldwin Wallace University (official @baldwinwallace channel). A Northeast Ohio PA program 20 minutes from John Hay. Verified live.

Where you can train for it

4 programs

Read these as minimums, not targets.Meeting the numbers below is what lets you apply; it is not what gets you in. Selective programs admit far fewer people than apply, and admitted students are usually well above the minimum. Call the program and ask what last year's admitted class actually looked like. That one phone call is worth more than any number on this page.

Case Western Reserve University

Cleveland, OH · Master of Science (MS), 27 months, 102 credit hours

Physician Assistant Studies, School of Medicine Physician Assistant Program

What they ask for

Cumulative and science grade point average of at least 3.0 on a 4.0 scale.
Baccalaureate degree from a regionally accredited institution in the United States or Canada before matriculation.
Completion of CWRU PA Program prerequisite coursework at a regionally accredited US or Canadian institution.
A minimum of 1,000 hours of direct, hands-on patient care experience in the United States or Canada, completed prior to application. This is the strictest hour requirement of the four programs listed here, so plan for it early.
CASPA application received and verified by September 1.

Closest PA program to John Hay, based at the Health Education Campus, Samson Pavilion, 9501 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland. ARC-PA has granted Accreditation-Continued status. Contact: 216.368.0575 is printed as a phone link on the program listing page at https://case.edu/programs/physician-assistant-studies-ms directly under the program director, along with the program email paprogram@case.edu, so that number reaches the PA program rather than a general graduate office. The 1,000-hour patient care minimum is printed both on that listing page and on https://case.edu/medicine/physician-assistant/admissions/prerequisites/pre-admissions-healthcare-experience. For current cost, use the program's own tuition page or call the program.

Program page 216.368.0575

Baldwin Wallace University

Berea, OH · Master of Medical Science in Physician Assistant, 24 months (12 months didactic plus 12 months clinical)

Physician Assistant Program

What they ask for

Minimum cumulative GPA of at least 3.5 and minimum science GPA of at least 3.5; the average GPA of students selected for admission is above 3.7.
Bachelor's degree required, plus specified prerequisite coursework.
Direct patient-care hours and shadowing hours are NOT required for admission, which is unusual and makes this the most accessible entry point of the four.
GRE not required for applicants beginning with the 2026 CASPA application cycle.
Three recommendations, at least one from a physician assistant or physician.

About 20 minutes from John Hay. Class size averages 40 students, with recent classes enrolling 35. Recent cohorts averaged 3.83 to 3.91 cumulative GPA and 1,177 to 6,464 healthcare hours even though hours are not required. Accreditation: see the accreditation note in the list below and confirm current ARC-PA status with ARC-PA directly before relying on it. Contact: (440) 826-8012 with graduate@bw.edu is printed on the admission page above; the program overview page at https://www.bw.edu/academics/physician-assistant/ prints (440) 826-8016 for the Graduate Admission Director, and paprogram@bw.edu is also published. For current cost, use the university's own tuition page or call the program.

Program page (440) 826-8012

Lake Erie College

Painesville, OH · Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies (MSPAS)

Physician Assistant Program

What they ask for

Minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0 as calculated by CASPA; matriculants maintain GPAs above 3.5.
Prerequisite courses completed within 7 years: General Chemistry I and II with labs, Organic Chemistry with lab, Biology I and II with labs, Human Anatomy and Physiology I and II with labs, Microbiology with lab, Statistics, Psychology, English, College Algebra, with a minimum grade of B- except Organic Chemistry at C-.
At least 250 hours of patient care experience, with at least 24 of those 250 hours from direct shadowing of a licensed physician assistant. The 24 hours count inside the 250, they are not additional.
Casper situational judgment assessment (90 to 110 minutes) through Acuity Insights.
CASPA deadline November 1, with submission before September 1 strongly recommended.

In Lake County, about 30 miles east of Cleveland. The program page names University Hospitals, Cleveland Clinic and Akron Children's Hospital among its clinical partners, so rotations happen in the same systems Cleveland students already know. ARC-PA Accreditation-Continued status, next validation review September 2028. Contact: 440.375.7000 is the college's main line as printed on the program page, and paeducation@lec.edu is the published program email, which is the better first contact. For cost, including any deposits, ask the program or use the college's own cost page.

Program page 440.375.7000

University of Mount Union

Alliance, OH · Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies, 27 months

Physician Assistant Studies

What they ask for

Overall GPA of 3.0 or above on a 4.0 scale and a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or above in prerequisite coursework.
Prerequisites: English Composition, General Psychology, General Biology I and II with labs or upper-level Biology, Anatomy and Physiology I and II with labs, Genetics, Principles of Chemistry with lab, Organic Chemistry I with lab, Elementary Statistics or Biostatistics, Microbiology with lab, Medical Terminology.
40 hours of shadowing an NCCPA-certified physician assistant. The adjustments block on the program page extends the deadline from the time of application to the time of matriculation and allows up to half of the hours (20) to be virtual shadowing.
Graduate Record Exam (GRE) General Exam required, the only one of these four that still requires it.
CASPA October 1 deadline.

In Stark County, about 60 miles south of Cleveland. ARC-PA Accreditation-Continued status. Contact: (800) 992-6682 is the institutional toll-free number printed on the program page; scarpill@mountunion.edu (Laurie Scarpitti) is the published contact for shadowing forms and is a better first email than the switchboard. Other numbers visible on that page belong to third-party transcript evaluators and to the Office of Business Affairs, not to the PA program. The program page does carry an estimated cost table with tuition plus separate technology, program and parking fees; read it on the program page itself rather than trusting any total quoted secondhand.

Program page (800) 992-6682

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