Career Resources

Creating a Five-Year PA Career Plan

Creating a five-year plan for your PA career is an empowering way to take charge of your career development. Read on for the PA Career Coach’s advice on how to identify your career goals and translate those goals into an actionable plan.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming a Healthcare Consultant

Led by PA Michael Asbach, this interactive members-only webinar will help you understand the healthcare consulting role, develop key skills, build a strong CV, leverage your healthcare experience, and navigate the entry into consulting.

Maintaining Professional Records Checklist

Although every PA’s path to clinical practice is unique, practicing PAs (and PA students) are responsible for collecting and retaining a standard set of documents as they progress in their careers. We’ve compiled these documents into the handy checklist below so you can make sure you have the professional records you need.

Ethical Guidelines for the PA Profession

AAPA has developed ethical guidelines for the PA profession that offer a framework for your decision-making.

Personal Finance for PAs

No matter where you are in your PA career, it’s beneficial to have a basic knowledge of saving, debt management, and use of credit. Gain insight, strategies, and tools to meet your financial goals with the help of these AAPA and partner resources.

Is Locums work a good option for you?

Practicing in a locum tenens position is a uniquely flexible way to explore a new location, expand your practice, make professional connections, and stay clinically active between longer-term positions.

Finding Your Dream Job

There is no perfect job. Career satisfaction is highly individualized. PAs can find the right job for them by carefully considering variables like work-life balance, compensation, and work setting, and prioritizing the variables that align with their passions, values, and morals.

Building Collegial Connections

Relationships are the cornerstone of PA practice. PAs can promote positive connections with colleagues through trust, respect, communication, and clarity.

Three Steps for Bouncing Back from Career Setbacks

Career disappointments and setbacks are parts of the professional journey that will happen to almost every PA at some point—and they can feel devastating. In this article I’d like to explore some ideas and approaches for responding to career setbacks so that you not only rebound but return to your practice with greater zest and confidence.

Effective Patient Communication: Background, Benefits + Best Practices

This article is an overview of effective patient communication, from background to benefits to strategies and pitfalls that the clinician should know.

Here’s How Every PA Can Play a Role in Mental Healthcare

Megan Pinder, MMS, PA-C, is an advocate for psychiatric patients both personally and professionally. She responds to questions about PAs’ role in mental health, how access, socioeconomic status, and stigma impact patient mental health, and how to advocate for mental health patients.

Health Inequities: How PAs Can Help Bridge the Care Gap

The PA Foundation’s Vital Minds podcast featured a discussion on how health disparities have been exacerbated by COVID-19, the role socioeconomic factors and insurance may play in health disparities, and how PAs – and other allies – can help bridge the care gap.

Expert Advice on Providing Trans-Affirming Healthcare

AAPA invited PAs Lauren Eisenbeis and Jo Rolls to host Huddle’s latest Ask Me session on transgender healthcare. Eisenbeis and Rolls used their expertise from years of experience to provide advice and resources for PAs to provide trans-affirming healthcare to patients.

PA Wellness

At AAPA, we’re here to support your PA well-being and fight PA burnout by ensuring your emotional, physical, social, workplace, and societal well-being.

Image of a PA talking to her colleagues.

Fact-Checked: Myths About Malpractice Insurance

AAPA has partnered with CM&F for more than 20 years to provide trusted insurance protection for PAs’ assets and careers. To help you understand the complexities of malpractice insurance, they debunk five of the most common myths they hear from PAs.