Professional performance of physician's assistants: a comparison of physician's assistant and physician ratings.

Physician's assistant educational programs have used surveys of their graduates as one method of evaluating educational objectives and curricula. A concern is the validity of physician's assistant self-ratings as measures of job performance. Ratings by supervising physicians have been suggested as more valid measures. In the present study ratings of physician's assistants and their supervising physicians were compared. Physician's assistants and their supervising physicians were interviewed using an interview instrument developed to cover the performance of the physician's assistant in the major activities of primary care practice. While the physicians and physician's assistants disagreed on several measures, in all cases the ratings of the physician's assistants were more conservative. Thus, the physician's assistants did not show any tendency to inflate ratings of their own performance.