| From 1965 until a national PA office was established in Washington, DC, the PA division of the Department of Community and Family Medicine at DUMC was the focal point of efforts to establish the PA profession both locally and nationally. There were four conferences held at Duke University prior to the "first" national conference for new health practitioners held in 1973. At these conferences, participants discussed various PA curricula models and developed strategies for expanding these models to other institutions. They refined the role of PAs, wrote model enabling legislation and drafted guidelines for establishing educational and certification standards. Participants included representatives from the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the Federal government, private foundations and various academic institutions. The first socioeconomic studies on the use of PAs in clinical practice were presented at these conferences. |
