What do we know about retired physician assistants? A preliminary study

Retirement generally means the complete end of employment. Retirement is a new phenomenon for physician assistants (PAs), as those trained in the 1970s exit their careers. To better understand retirement patterns of PAs, we undertook a survey in 2011 using a national database. A cadre of 625 respondents met the criteria of being retired and living; the mean age of PA retirement was 61 years (range 47-75 years). Duration of a PA career was 29 years on average (range, 10-40 years). Forty-three percent of respondents retired from family/general medicine and 11% from emergency medicine. Almost all reported receiving Social Security and Medicare; most had some form of a pension. Fewer than one-fifth retired for health reasons. When asked about the timeliness of retiring, 20% wished they had retired later in life; 4% of the men and 7% of the women thought they should have retired earlier; 74% of the men and 73% of the women said they had retired at the right time. Reasons for retiring varied widely. Approximately one-quarter reported volunteering in a medically-related capacity. We suggest that retirement is a concept undergoing evolution in American society and that PAs represent a health profession that reflects the complexity of this evolution.