APAP Presents Its Partnership, Teaching, and Research Achievement Awards

By Eileen Evans

This winners of the APAP Master Teacher, Research Achievement, and Partnership awards are featured in this issue. The New Faculty, Outstanding Service, and the Excellence Through Diversity awards were highlighted in an article published in the December 2003 APAP Update. Presentations were made at an awards ceremony attended by member faculty and colleagues of the winners during APAP’s Education Forum, held in late October 2003 in Phoenix, Arizona.

APAP Master Teacher Award

The Master Teacher award allows APAP to honor the essence of the PA educator’s work — teaching. Winners in this category must

• Excel in clinical or classroom teaching;
• Demonstrate excellence in scholarship and/or professional service; or
• Embody values of academic and intellectual honesty, curiosity, and work ethic.

This year’s winner of the Master Teacher Award is J. Dennis Blessing, PhD, PA-C, program director of the PA program at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

The nomination letter received on Blessing’s behalf stated: “Because of his personal mentorship and strong academic leadership, Blessing’s educator colleagues hold him in the highest esteem and greatly admire his teaching abilities. He has been instrumental in influencing the career development and successes of multiple students, faculty, and administrators in the PA profession. A superb teacher, Blessing engages students and provides the space and attention in classroom settings that enable them to reach their full potential. His teaching outcomes are to produce highly motivated learners and careful, competent practitioners who will develop into tomorrow’s leaders in the PA profession.”

J. Dennis Blessing, PhD, PA-C

The dean of the university that is host to the PA program at San Antonio called herself one of Blessing’s biggest fans and wrote of the new dedication to quality education Blessing brought to the PA and other departments within the school. Early in his tenure, Blessing wrote a training grant that augmented the budget and mission of the PA department, allowed for the expansion of the PA curriculum, and provided leadership in new areas. According to his dean, Blessing is committed to finding opportunities for disadvantaged students, and she praised his dedication to equal opportunity and cultural responsibility in the health professions.

The dean continued: “While Blessing can go out of his way for students, he never lowers the benchmark. He feels a tremendous obligation for students to meet the same standards he establishes for himself. Because students admire him for his experience and knowledge, they earnestly want to reach his expectations. He places PA students side by side with the medical students and trust and team work emerge. He is always looking for better ways of accomplishing his role as an educator. Blessing is simply different; he is the best!”

Blessing mentors a number of PA teachers around the country and helps them balance teaching, research, and service responsibilities, giving of his own time to help them accomplish this. Praise from his students is abundant and positive. One student commented: “Dr. Blessing consistently pushes his students to achieve their maximum potential, not only in PA studies, but in all aspects of life. He does this not by presenting a didactic course on how to excel, but by leading a life of accomplishment and striving continuously for more. He leads by example and, by constantly demonstrating patience, compassion, and scholarship, provides a figure worthy of emulation. This is the ultimate form of teaching, and Dr. Blessing has successfully mastered it.”

The first winner of APAP’s Research Achievement Award in 2001 and the 1997 winner of its Outstanding Service Award, Blessing received the warm acclamation of his colleagues at the awards ceremony and was presented with a plaque and a $500 check.

APAP Research Achievement Award

Richard Dehn, PA-C, MPA, associate director of the University of Iowa PA Program, was selected to receive the APAP Research Achievement Award for research and scholarly work as it relates to PA education. The award can be presented to an individual who has a distinguished record of scholarly contributions to PA education over many years and/or someone who has authored a recent, seminal work of importance to PA educators.

	One of two nomination letters on Dehn’s behalf stated, “It would be difficult to identify members of the PA academic community who have contributed as extensively as has Dehn to the development of a research culture in PA education.” The letter praised Dehn’s scholarship and service for doing so much to “frame and promote PA research in education and practice.”
Richard Dehn, PA-C, MPA

The second letter for Dehn’s nomination emphasized his involvement with APAP’s research agenda over the last decade and tireless efforts to bring research to the forefront of the organization. It rated his contributions over the years to the growing body of literature within the PA profession as consistently excellent and maintained that his involvement with Perspective on Physician Assistant Education as a reviewer and feature editor has enhanced the quality of the publication.

Dehn has given more than 25 presentations at APAP and AAPA meetings; published more than 50 articles in the Clinical Advisor on PA education and practice; edited the Primary Care Review for Physician Assistants: Companion Handbook; and coedited the 2001 publication of Clinical Procedures for Physician Assistants. He authored twelve chapters in Primary Care Review for Physician Assistants in both the 1998 and 2000 editions of this important resource for PA practice. He is an editorial board member for the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants (JAAPA) and served on the recertification board for Physician Assistant Journal until it ceased publication in 2003.

Dehn has mentored numerous students in the completion of their independent master’s research projects and several others who won recognition in the APAP Student Writing Competition. Five of his students published papers in JAAPA and one has become a regular contributor to PA journals.

Dehn’s service to APAP and AAPA includes major contributions in the area of research and informatics. Perhaps his most widely recognized achievement has been the creation, administration, and moderation of several closed, on-line user lists for PA program faculty, the JAAPA editorial board, the APAP Research and Review Committee, and CASPA.

Since 1995 Dehn has served on APAP’s Research and Review Committee. He was chair from 2000 until last year, when the committee was incorporated into the Research Institute and he became cochair. He has been a PATH consultant, specializing in curricular evaluation, and an ARC-PA site visitor since 1999. He designed the current system for review and selection of projects funded through the APAP Small Grants Program and the NCCPA/APAP Research Grants Program. For many years he single-handedly reviewed all the surveys instruments designed by PA researchers that would subsequently be disseminated to the programs. For the past couple of years, Dehn has designed and conducted preconference research workshops for other faculty who wish to develop their research skills.

Dehn has held committee and advisory positions for both AAPA and APAP. Since 1997, he has chaired the APAP Student Writing competition subcommittee. He was instrumental in securing the support of the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA) in cosponsoring a grants program with APAP for PA faculty research. In 2000 he served as research representative for the NCCPA/APAP Joint Committee on PA Research and since then has cochaired its grants program. He was a member of the NCCPA Research Committee in 2002.

In 2001 Dehn, with Jim Cawley, received the AAPA Publishing Award (PAragon Award, first place) for the best PA-authored publication in 2000; and in 2003 Dehn was awarded a Teaching Scholar’s award by his institution for protected time to receive advanced training in teaching and a grant to develop an independent teaching project.

Dehn was awarded a $500 check and a sculpture piece and received the well-deserved recognition of his peers.

APAP Partnership Award

Through its Partnership Award, APAP honors institutions outside formal PA program circles that have made outstanding contributions to excellence in PA education. This year’s winner is the South Texas Environmental Education Research Project (STEER), a public health education project that has partnered with the PA program at the Laredo Campus of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.

During their STEER rotations, PA students visit the local Colonias, Hispanic settlements along the Mexico-Texas border.

STEER serves as a rotation for the PA program and offers students hands-on exposure to environmental medicine along the South Texas-Mexico border. It provides students with an opportunity to learn about the challenges faced by the area’s indigent, working poor and legal and illegal immigrants — a population without education or public support. Faculty and students describe the STEER experience as unlike any in the country for its ability to acquaint students with the realities of difficult health situations brought on by poverty, inadequate water supply and waste management, air quality issues, and lack of medical access and insurance.

STEER has hosted more than 20 PA students from the Texas program in the past 18 months and is one of the most sought-after rotations the program offers. Typically, students attend one of nine 4-week rotations scheduled throughout the year. The STEER program provides all transportation; housing is provided through an Area Health Education Center.

During the rotation, students are exposed to a variety of instructors representing their fields within the Texas Health Department, the Mexican government, and many Texas universities. Students also meet traditional practitioners and talk firsthand with Curanderismos, Mexican folk healers, to whom Hispanic people often turn before seeking traditional medical help. The Curanderismos give students a tour of area yerberias, traditional Mexican pharmacies that deal mostly in herbs and describe the medicinal uses of indigenous plants.

Students learn about the Rio Grande River, pollution, and its effects on both sides of the Texas-Mexican border. They participate in field surveillance measures for diseases like rabies, dengue fever, and tuberculosis. They see the impact of zoonotic and vector-borne diseases. Students also visit with residents of the local Colonias — a series of Hispanic settlements built by the families that live along the Mexico-Texas border. These settlements have neither running water nor sewage treatment and sometimes no electricity. The better homes are made out of cinderblock; the lesser ones, plywood. Students come to realize the tremendous risks to health care posed by the environment and gain cultural and socioeconomic competence, as well as a good, basic understanding of epidemiology.

The nomination letter on STEER’s behalf emphasized the impressive dedication of the project’s faculty and staff, who are strongly committed to improving health, through education, in the Texas-Mexico area, particularly among the neediest people. J. Dennis Blessing, program director of the PA program, said that he had been involved with a number of educational projects over the years and, in his estimation, none were as good as STEER in educating students in critical health and geographic areas. He considers the STEER personnel valuable partners in his program’s efforts to meet the physical, social, and mental needs of the residents in the Texas-Mexico border area and praised STEER for helping the PA students become better practitioners.

Blessing accepted a plaque on behalf of STEER, his program’s nominee.