Professional Performance of Physician's Assistants

Abstract

Physician's assistant educational programs have used surveys of their graduates as one method of evaluating educational objectives and curricula. A concern is the validitY' of phisician's assistant self-ratings as measures of job performance. Ratings by supervising phy sicians have been suggested as more valid measures. In the present stud) ratings of physician's assistants and their supervising phy sicians were compared. Physician's assistants and their supervising physicians were interviewed using an interview instrument developed to cover the performance of the physician's assistant in the major activities ofprimary' care practice. While the physicians and physician's assistants disagreed on several measures, in all cases the ratings of the physician's assistants were more conservative. Thus, the physician's assistants did not show any tendency to inflate ratings of their own performance.