Among the Hobbits and the hares, two University of Florida School of Physician Assistant Studies Class of 2011 alumni have helped shape international practice for PAs. Alexandra Kayat, MPAS ʼ11, joined her husband in New Zealand in 2017 after working for six years in U.S. emergency rooms. She was just the third practicing PA in the country following a government-sponsored pilot program of the profession. She worked in primary care at Ropata Health in Lower Hutt, Wellington, seeing patients who needed same-day acute care.

Because the PA profession was still unregulated in New Zealand when she started, Kayat worked under the supervision of a clinic physician, who signed off on prescriptions and tests.

It was a highly collaborative role that she enjoyed, but she saw a path forward: full regulation and certification of PAs by the country’s leading medical body, the New Zealand Medical Council.

It’s a milestone she’s been working toward first as president, now as executive director, of the roughly 50-member New Zealand PA Society and one that is finally being realized in 2026. Soon, she said, PAs will receive another honor — a Maori title for the PA profession, unique only to Aotearoa New Zealand.

“It’s an exciting time for PAs in New Zealand,” Kayat said. “We’re hoping we can fill the gap in New Zealand’s health workforce, especially for rural patients.”

Across the globe, Jaclyn Rohan, MPAS ʼ11, journeyed to Dublin for a year to help establish Ireland’s first PA program in 2016. After visiting the country the year before, she discovered the Irish government was starting a pilot program bringing PAs from the U.K. and the U.S. to work in hospitals and introduce the profession to the country.

Rohan had been working in breast and general surgery in Orlando, and it just so happened the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland was looking for a PA in those specialties. She took the job and set off across the ocean for a yearlong adventure.

At the end of her time abroad, one of the surgeons who had been most hesitant about the program invited her to join his practice, which Rohan said showed how the team effectively demonstrated the importance of the profession.

“It was incredible not only to show those in another country what I do as a PA but also to have the opportunity to not live in a silo,” Rohan said. “I was able to see how somewhere other than where I live and breathe operates.”