At Hamilton Health Sciences, our 60 physician assistants play a vital role working alongside our physicians to provide continuity of care for patients.
Our physician assistants perform many of the same medical tasks and procedures as our physicians, such as taking a patient’s history, ordering blood tests and diagnostic imaging scans, performing physical examinations, suturing wounds, giving injections, casting fractures and interpret test results. They also work with our doctors to diagnose patients and assist in the operating room. As part of a patient’s health-care team, physician assistants collaborate with physicians, residents, nurses, social workers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and pharmacists to coordinate patient care.
Education requirements
Graduate of a Physician Assistant program
Registration requirements
Union group
Highlights
Our physician assistants play a major role in facilitating consistent application of clinical protocols and continuity of care, and identify patient clinical issues typically seen in the following specialty areas:
- The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at our McMaster Children’s Hospital is comprised of a Level III NICU, a Level II nursery and a neonatal transport team. It serves a broad geographic area across southern Ontario. Our NICU is actively involved in a number of collaborative quality improvement initiatives provincially, nationally and internationally.
- The General Surgery program at our Hamilton General Hospital offers full services for most sub-specialties of General Surgery. This program performs more than 1,600 general surgeries per year with more than 600 of them being emergency cases. The post-operative unit consists of 26 inpatient beds and 6 step-down beds.
- The Cardiac and Vascular Program at our Hamilton General Hospital services the needs of inpatients and outpatients with cardiac disorders such as valvular, electrophysiological, adult congenital and coronary artery, as well as vascular disease. The program provides advanced cardiac care services including procedures such as cardiac catheterization, cardiac angioplasty, cardiac surgery and electrophysiological procedures. We are the tertiary cardiac surgical centre supporting the regional cardiac program for South Central Ontario and we provides clinical service for approximately 1800 cardiac surgical cases yearly. Our cardiac surgery inpatient unit, consisting of 30 beds, provides pre- and post-operative care to cardiac surgical patients.