Physician Assistants are so ubiquitous in the American health-care system that it might be hard to believed that the profession did not even exist until the middle of the 1960s. Dr. Eugene Stead, Jr., chairman of Duke University’s Department of Medicine, believed that the practical, hands-on experience that Hospital Corpsmen and Medics returning to civilian life after serving the various branches of the military could help relieve the growing demand for primary-care physicians. In 1965, Stead launched Duke University’s Physician Assistant program with four former Navy Corpsmen making up the first class. Two years later, three of them—Vic Germino, Ken Ferrell, and Dick Scheele—graduated from the program and went to work at Duke. But Germino soon found himself using his new degree in the Coast Guard as the service’s first Physician Assistant.
Physician Assistant (PYA) was a Warrant Officer specialty at that time, and in the Navy and Coast Guard that meant that the first step in a career as a PA was taken as a W-1, an “officer” rank but without commission. (The Coast Guard eventually eliminated the W-1 rank.) In 1988, the Coast Guard began the process of converting all its Physician Assistant billets from Warrant Officer positions to commissioned officers.
Although the Physician Assistant insignia—a caduceus with a sprig of oak leaves and acorns at the base—was still listed in the 1991 Coast Guard Uniform Regulations, it was just a matter of time before the last PYA Warrant Officer had either resigned or had moved into the commissioned officer ranks.
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