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Can canadian pa's practice in usa


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Found at this link: http://www.arc-pa.org/faq/non_us_professionals.html#painUS

On the ARC-PA's website (they accredit US PA programs and determine who may sit for the PANCE exam to practice in the US)

 

I am a physician assistant who was educated outside the United States. How do I become a PA in the US? Do I have to attend a US PA program to work as a PA in the United States? I have heard that some states allow for this without attending a US based PA program. Is this true?

 

Before you can work in the US, you must contact the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS International) to complete a visa screening program which, in part, will determine if your education was equivalent to that from a US PA Program. If after reviewing the web site, you remain interested, you should contact Ms. Silvia Pomponi, the CGFNS regulatory liaison specialist who works with PA applicants. If your education is equivalent, you are eligible for a certificate that you can submit with your visa application to the US State Department. The State Department’s approval of your occupational visa may help you enter the U.S. but you are still not eligible to work as a PA in the U.S.

To become a PA in the United States, individuals must also attend and graduate from an ARC-PA–accredited entry-level PA program and pass the Physician Assistant National Certifying Exam (PANCE) administered by the National Commission on Certifying of Physician Assistants (NCCPA).

For information on PA programs contact the Physician Assistant Education Association (PAEA). Eligibility criteria for taking the Physician Assistant National Certifying Exam (PANCE) are available on the NCCPA web site.

Additional information on practicing as a PA in the US can be found at the American Academy of Physician Assistants’ (AAPA) web site.

To determine if an individual state allows non-US educated physicians to practice as PAs without additional education and national certification, you would have to contact the licensing bodies of the specific states.

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As a Canadian PA student, I have also inquired about this, as have many of my upperclassmen/women. The short answer is, to work as a PA you have to write the PANCE, to write the PANCE you must be graduated from a program that the NCCPA deems accredited. Either 1) the NCCPA must recognize the accreditation process in Canada as equivalent to the one in the USA (we have the CAPA: http://www.caopa.net/ btw) or 2)they must change the policy slightly. I think that (1) is more likely and, from what I have heard, it is being discussed on some level but I doubt it will happen anytime soon. Just for kicks there is an interesting thread over here: http://premed101.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47305

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