This is National Physician Assistant Week (Oct. 6-12), and it is appropriate to note that the Physician Assistant (PA) profession was born at Duke, launched in 1965 by Dr. Eugene A. Stead Jr., former chair of the Department of Medicine.
Stead established the first PA training program in 1965 in response to a growing demand for health care professionals, in the process coining the phrase “physician assistant.” Three former U.S. Navy corpsmen became the first graduates on Oct. 6, 1967 — Dr. Stead’s birthday, as it happened.