Health care collaboration: USask’s Master of Physician Assistant Studies program

The two-year graduate program is the first-of-its-kind in Saskatchewan and will prepare physician assistants (PAs) – a newly regulated profession in the province – to be key contributors to health-care teams across the province, including urban, rural, remote and northern areas.

PAs are health-care professionals who work under the supervision of licensed physicians but have autonomy to perform a wide range of clinical tasks and procedures, such as conducting patient assessments, prescribing medications, and formulating treatment plans. They can work in all clinical settings including primary care, long-term care, emergency medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, and surgical specialties.

Amy Lattimer has more than a decade of experience practicing as a PA in Manitoba. She decided to pursue the profession after a having a positive experience with a PA as an undergraduate student in the United States.

“I was very impressed by how thorough, competent and informative of a provider she was, but I also understood the large void in the health-care system she was filling, and in a cost-effective way,” she said. “I saw parallel struggles in the Canadian health-care system, and I wanted to be a part of the solution.”

In 2023, Saskatchewan introduced legislation changes that allowed PAs to be licensed to practice in the province. USask’s new MPAS program is funded as part of Saskatchewan’s Health Human Resource (HHR) Action Plan to recruit, train, incentivize, and retain more health-care professionals.

The MPAS program at USask has 20 seats and opened applications in fall 2024 for its September 2025 start date, receiving an enthusiastic response from applicants.

Dr. Trustin Domes (MD), academic director and lead of the USask MPAS program, said the program will help improve patient care and service delivery, by integrating licensed PAs alongside other health professionals in the province.

“Physician assistants are a key member of the health-care team in numerous areas across Canada and also in other countries,” he said.

Currently, Saskatchewan is recruiting PAs to join the health-care system in communities across the province.

“It’s a huge opportunity for Saskatchewan to bring the program in at this time. I’ve been told by MDs that having a physician assistant has helped bring back some of the joy in medicine,” said Domes.

“With a physician assistant there’s someone there to lend a hand and to help. Bringing in a second pair of hands, a second pair of eyes, just someone to chat about cases – these things are beneficial because it’s bringing back that team approach that the system needs.”

Domes said that establishing a graduate-level program while supporting the growth of a new profession has its benefits, including Saskatchewan-trained graduates who can fill health-care roles. 

“I think bringing the academic program in as we’re building the profession in Saskatchewan is a smart move,” he said. “We need to have homegrown PAs.”

A key component of building the program is curriculum development. The MPAS team is working closely with a Physician Assistant Advisory Council (PAAC), which includes practicing Canadian PAs and local physicians, to identify key topics that will prepare students for clinical rotations and licensing exams, while still meeting national curriculum standards.

According to Domes, the two-year program will be innovative, with a lot of hands-on approaches, along with team-based and case-based learning. In the first year, the program will provide foundational knowledge, followed by clinical placement and practice in Year 2, along with a strong research focus.

Social accountability and rural heath are important components of the program, Domes said. So are partnerships, since they provide students with valuable opportunities to gain hands-on experience and see what career opportunities are available after graduation.

“Making sure that we're doing things through a social accountability lens is really important in this program,” he said. “We want to bring in learners with diverse backgrounds and we plan to expose our learners to a wide range of environments from the city centre to rural and remote communities.”

Domes said they want learners to experience first-hand how health care is delivered in multiple different contexts with at least half of the clinical experiences in the second year of the program being planned outside of Saskatoon and Regina. Integrating MPAS learners into rural locations is critical for future PA recruitment in rural Saskatchewan– both to support physicians and address rural health-care needs.

“Developing that is really important so our learners understand the needs in the community,” he said. “We’d also love for this program – again, this is a work in progress with our provincial partners – to link the (government’s) human health resource need with our educational program, so that our learners are keenly aware of what jobs are available when they graduate.”

For Lattimer, her day starts around 7 am.

“l receive sign over from the night team, where we’re informed of any new consults, surgeries, admissions, or clinical status changes. I then help with a brief didactic teaching session on a trauma topic geared towards the residents,” she said.

Lattimer then completes rounds with the senior resident, surgeon and charge nurse, seeing most of the admitted in-patients. This is followed by a PA-run clinic to see patients after they’ve been discharged.

“The afternoon consists of any unstructured combination of the following: surgical assisting, assessing trauma patients in the emergency department, performing or assisting with procedures, reviewing consults, addressing ward issues, and co-ordinating discharges. At day’s end, around 5 pm, we provide a brief sign over to the oncoming night team.”

“Studies have shown that physicians that have a physician assistant often have a better work-life balance, less stress, less burnout, and more gratification in their work,” said Domes. “And I think that translates into better patient care.”

Health care relies on teamwork. The partnership between a PA and physician improves patient outcomes, improves efficiency and helps physicians direct their attention to more complex cases.

“We know the importance of team-based care,” said Domes. “Having a PA for a physician provides the opportunity to off-load some of that work, to increase the access to patients, to be innovative in the way that we’re providing care, to get more thorough out of our cases, and for the physician to focus on areas where their expertise is really needed. These are some of the areas where the physician assistant can improve the system and patient care.”

He added that each PA-physician relationship is unique. Trust and communication are vital for a successful partnership and helps to deliver the best care for the patient.

Lattimer agrees. She said that teamwork and the ability to work seamlessly with many different members of the health-care team are key to being an effective PA.

“Collaboration with other health-care providers is one of the pillars of a good physician assistant. A large part of my job is acting as a liaison between my supervising physician, and other health-care providers: consultant physicians, nurses, resident doctors, and other allied health professionals. We are in constant communication to collaborate to make the best decisions for our patients,” she said.

Programs such as MPAS play an important role in preparing students to fill health care roles, while promoting collaboration in the health-care system.

“I think our ultimate goal is to improve outcomes for patients and strengthen the health-care system,” said Domes. “Having the academic program here is great, because we’re able to train future PAs to help fill those important roles, and work with our health care and provincial partners to provide good jobs for our future graduates to go to.”