How To Know If A Distance Learning Physician Assistant Program Is Accredited or Not

How to Know if a Distance Learning Physician Assistant Program Is Accredited or Not

The Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant, Inc. (ARC-PA) is the agency in charge of accrediting both traditional and distance learning for medical assistants. Visit the website to find out if the school you want to enroll in is included in the roster of ARC-PA accredited institutions. The list of accredited programs is public and online so it’s very convenient to simply go to the website and look for the name of the school on the list.

Why is accreditation of your school important for your future? You may not realize it now but when you complete the program and you’re looking for a job, you will be glad that you took the time to find out if the program offering is from an accredited institution.

If you have the skills, the patience and the perseverance to finish your physician assistant course, you are more than qualified to take the certification examination. A certification exam is to screen all the graduates of this course. However, you should know that only those from accredited institutions will be able to take these exams. A good school that’s accredited for distant learning physician assistant program is a good find, but there are a lot of those institutions that are not accredited so beware.

The Physician Assistant National Certifying Exam is offered in one state, and the license you will get by getting certified will enable you to work as a physician assistant in your state of choice.

The Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant, Inc. (ARC-PA), www.arc-pa.org, is the ruling body that comes up with a list of the standards for entry-level physician assistant programs. There are outlined educational standards that most institutions that offer the course have to comply with. Here are some of the other institutions that assist the ARC-PA in coming up with the standards.

* American Academy of Physician Assistants, www.aapa.org
* Physician Assistant Education Association, www.paeaonline.org
* American Medical Association, www.ama-assn.org
* American College of Surgeons, www.facs.org
* American College of Physicians, www.acponline.org
* American Academy of Pediatrics, www.aap.org
* American Academy of Family Physicians, www.aafp.org

The list of legitimate accrediting agencies can be found on the U.S. Department of Education, wwww.ed.gov, and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), chea.org, websites. The fact that ARC-PA is listed on the CHEA website is proof that the ARC-PA is an authority when it comes to your certification as a Physician Assistant.