UNMC celebrates 40 years of PAs

Forty years ago, in 1975, UNMC graduated its first class of 29 physician assistants. At the recent Nebraska Academy of Physician Assistants annual conference in Kearney, UNMC celebrated that inaugural class as the profession’s pioneers in the state.

Tom Gallagher, M.D., receives a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the UNMC PA program.

“The success of the profession in Nebraska since that time is often pinned to the rewarding response received from those first graduates that introduced the PA profession to the state,” said UNMC physician assistant education program director Michael Huckabee, Ph.D.

That first class had to first convince physicians to hire and supervise them, and then win patients’ trust, when many had never heard of a PA.

Dan Danaher, who serves as a PA with the Lincoln Department of Corrections and the Nebraska Army National Guard, remembers being in that first class.

“It was exciting but also quite tense through my first year of training,” he said. “There was a lot of confusion, and many did not have a clear picture of where the PA would fit into the field of medical professionals.

“Fortunately we had the personality of survivors, and most of us took it in stride and fought for our right to be where we needed to be.”

The nation’s first class of PA graduates came from Duke University in the late 1960s, but Nebraska was not far behind. In 1971 the Nebraska legislature allocated funds for UNMC to start a PA program. The following year, UNMC’s Jesse Edwards and T.F. Gallagher, M.D., collaborated with Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas to begin training PAs.

“Mr. Jesse Edwards was a champion for us,” Danaher said.

Dr. Gallagher was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the celebration for serving as program director and medical director from 1974-1989.

Decades later, the UNMC PA program’s collaborative relationship with the U.S. and now Canadian military remains strong.

The program continues to grow, in the 1990s offering master’s degree, distance-learning and degree-completion programs. It’s currently in the midst of its largest grant to date, “Making Primary Care Primary.” The Omaha campus now enrolls 50 per class.

“UNMC is poised to continue to expand high-quality health care in the state thanks to effective health care teams that include PAs,” Dr. Huckabee said.

Forty years later, the program continues to build on the momentum that started in 1975.

The UNMC-Kearney campus is prepared to enroll in August eight PA students. It will be the program’s second “first class.”