Physician Assistant job description
1,489 verified openings in Physicians & Advanced Practice
Physician assistants earned a median of $135,880 in May 2025, or $65.33 an hour, with the lowest tenth under $99,380 and the highest above $190,280. They examine, diagnose, and treat patients under a physician's supervision, take medical histories, order and read diagnostic tests, prescribe medication, and counsel patients on treatment and self-care. Offices of physicians employ 53 percent of the 168,900 physician assistants counted in 2025, hospitals 26 percent, and outpatient care centers 9 percent. Schedules vary with the setting and can include nights, weekends, holidays, and call.
Core Duties and Responsibilities
Five tasks come first and effectively tie: making tentative diagnoses and decisions about management and treatment, interpreting diagnostic results for deviations from normal, prescribing therapy or medication with physician approval, examining patients to establish their physical condition, and compiling the medical record from history, progress notes, and examination findings. Ordering x-rays, electrocardiograms, and laboratory tests follows. Counseling patients on prescribed regimens, growth and development, family planning, and health maintenance ranks just under those, and the procedural side follows: injections, immunizations, suturing, wound care, and infection management. Rounds, house calls, and assisting in surgery fill out the list.
Common Skills and Technologies
Reading comprehension and critical thinking come out on top, with listening, writing, speaking, sizing up a patient, service orientation, and judgment close behind, and science underneath all of it. Epic Systems is what employers ask for by name, with eClinicalWorks and MEDITECH also named and Word, Excel, and Outlook around them. Charting experience in Epic is worth naming outright on an application.
Education, Training, and Career Path
Every state licenses physician assistants, and the route runs through a master's degree and a passing score on the qualifying exam, which earns the PA-C credential; most states also want a written agreement with a supervising physician. Reported education matches almost exactly, at roughly four in five holding a master's and one in seven a first professional degree. Army 65D Physician Assistant, a commissioned officer role, maps straight across in O*NET's crosswalk of military occupations, and the reported titles specialize fast, into cardiology, emergency medicine, orthopedics, and surgical critical care.
Sources: O*NET 30.0, 29-1071.00 Physician Assistants, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/29-1071.00. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 29-1071, https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291071.htm.