National Physician Assistant (PA) Week (Oct. 6-12): Airman, Soldier graduate from IPAP, join ranks of force multipliers

By Bernard S. Little Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Hospital Communications

Physician assistants (PAs) are indispensable to military medicine, serving as force multipliers of readiness. This valued group added two of its newest members during the Interservice Physician Assistant Program (IPAP) Phase 2 Class 24-2 graduation at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Oct. 2.

U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Melida Hines and U.S. Army 1st Lt. Douglas LaLone, both former enlisted service members, earned their commission and their master's degree in PA studies for completing the rigorous two-and-a-half-year IPAP program.

They were also inducted into the Biomedical Sciences Corps, a diverse, multifaceted component of the U.S. Air Force Medical Service composed of specialized healthcare, scientific, and technical professionals. Members of the corps support operational readiness by ensuring service members are mentally and physically fit for duty.

Hines and LaLone now head to their separate assignments to provide presidential healthcare to Military Health System (MHS) beneficiaries, protecting the health of those who protect the nation.

IPAP’s demanding 29-month curriculum emphasizes training that prepares students to not only provide routine care to maintain force health but also emergency medicine and orthopedics, ensuring graduates are uniquely prepared to treat the specific injuries and clinical demands that most frequently occur to service members in deployed environment.

To become their branch’s newest military Medical Service Corps (MSC) officers, Hines, a former technical sergeant, and LaLone, a former staff sergeant, began their journey in IPAP Phase 1 at the Army Medical Department Center for Excellence in early 2024 at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. This phase included 16 months of intense didactic study of more than 100 semester hours, 40 subjects and 101 exams, explained U.S. Air Force Maj. Barbara Jean, site director for IPAP Phase 2 at Walter Reed.

After completing IPAP Phase 1, Hines and LaLone earned their bachelor’s degree from the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), which provides academic credit and degree-granting affiliation for IPAP. They then received orders for IPAP Phase 2, which is held at seven different sites including Walter Reed, Jean added.

Hines and LaLone gained their PA clinical expertise during Phase 2, Jean explained. This phase included more than a year of approximately 2,000 supervised clerkship hours in 19 different clinical and surgical specialties. The master’s degree in PA studies that Hines and LaLone earned for completing IPAP Phase 2 is also granted by UNMC.

At the graduation and commissioning , LaLone’ wife, Sarah, and his mother, Susan, pinned his first lieutenant bars on his uniform. U.S. Army Maj. Jonas Byler, IPAP Phase 2 deputy program director, administered him the Oath of Office as a newly- commissioned Army officer.

Hines’ mother, Brenda, and husband, U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Eric Hines, pinned her first lieutenant bars on her uniform. He also administered her the Oath of Office.

Assisted by their family members, the new PAs also donned their medical white coats at the graduation. The donning of the white coat is a tradition for healthcare graduates symbolizing their transition into the medical profession and the responsibility they accept as healthcare providers. LaLone’s sister, Sarah, and Hines’s mother and sister Susan, assisted them in putting on their white coats.

Jean then administered the graduates the Physician Assistant Oath. They, first and foremost, pledged to, “hold as [their] primary responsibility the health, safety, welfare and dignity of all human beings, … [and] work with other members of the healthcare team to provide compassionate and effective care of patients.”

In 1996, the Air Force, Army and Navy combined their separate PA programs to form IPAP, Jean shared. “Our mission is to provide the uniformed services with highly competent, compassionate physician assistants who model integrity, strive for leadership excellence, and are committed to lifelong learning.”

Hines and LaLone expressed appreciation to their families and instructors for their support enabling them to complete the intense PA training. Both said they now look forward to applying what they learned to advance the health of service members and their families, as well as force readiness.

“You have been instrumental to where we’re at now and sticking by us during our long hours of studying,” Hines said. “We appreciate all of it.”

The PA profession is rooted in military medicine. Dr. Eugene A. Stead Jr. (Oct. 6,1908-June 12, 2005), a physician, medical educator and researcher, created it to help ease primary care and rural physician shortages by training former military medical personnel for the profession. The first class of PAs graduated on Oct. 6, 1967, from Duke University in North Carolina. The inaugural class consisted of three former Navy hospital corpsmen (Kenneth F. Ferrell, Victor Hugo Germino Jr., and Richard John Scheele).

National Physician Assistant (PA) Week, is now annually observed from Oct. 6-12. It began on Oct. 6, 1987, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the first graduating class of PAs and coinciding with Stead’s birthday. The week was established to highlight the vital contributions, healthcare access, and team-based patient care PAs provide to their patients.

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