APAP Concludes Federal Contract

APAP is pleased to announce the completion of a three-year contract awarded to the Association in 2001 in the amount of $254,980 by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Bureau of Health Professions. As the advocate organization for physician assistant education, APAP has been involved over its history in providing its members with faculty development resources and new ways to present them. The purpose of the HRSA contract was to develop, implement, and evaluate three priority projects to enhance the overall quality of physician assistant education and provide faculty development resources to PA educators.

Projects and Outcomes

1. Eight articles were published in APAP’s official journal, Perspective on Physician Assistant Education, as part of the contract. Each article featured outcomes of HRSA-funded, educational projects implemented by the PA programs to specifically address HRSA priority goals, such as minority recruitment and retention, care of the medically underserved, palliative care, women’s health, HIV/AIDS, geriatrics, and distance learning. Published as the four quarterly issues of Volume 14 (2003), the articles will support faculty report-planning and serve as a key resource for program and grant development. In addition, all articles published in Perspective are accessible from the home page of APAP’s Web site, www.apap.org.

2. Development and implementation of an on-line practice management/reimbursement curriculum resource for PA faculty and students. Four curriculum modules were created: Introduction to Coding, Reimbursement 101, Evaluation and Management, and Quality Improvement. The modules include a faculty guide, readings and suggestions for further learning, PowerPoint presentations with speaker notes, quizzes, teaching materials, and a glossary of terms.

3. A faculty resource manual that includes educational learning objectives, course materials, and an evaluation plan for each core competency. This project builds on the work of the 1996 AAPA Core Competency Project initiated under the PA Workforce and Faculty Development Contract with HRSA. Under that contract, the core competencies of practicing PAs were identified, based on learning objectives for coursework in PA educational programs. In the recent contract, 69 content areas were selected from themes identified in the previous contract. Additional content areas were incorporated from the Accreditation Standards for Physician Assistant Education, published by the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant, Inc. The development of competency-based objectives grounded on these resources ensures that the curriculum is relevant to the responsibilities of practicing PAs.

Projects Expand Through Web Posting

Funding outside the contract made it possible to create a Web-based platform that allows products to be sustained and updated. The entire faculty resource curriculum is available for downloading at the Members Only section of the APAP Web site, http://www.apap.org/members/members.htm, where PDF files and PowerPoint slides make this resource user-friendly and readily adaptable to individual program use. Faculty will especially appreciate the How We Do Its and Teaching Tips that are part of the curriculum. Submitting authors are identified, as well as programs associated with these ideas. Faculty users can link directly to an e-mail contact associated with a particular teaching tip and converse with the program educator who developed the strategy. The electronic format also provides for the expansion of a database of strategies and tips, as well as for the fast dissemination of new information throughout the site. Evaluation forms linked to the projects allow for faculty feedback on the projects.

Contract Personnel

Anita Glicken, M.S.W., Professor of Pediatrics and academic coordinator at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center Child Health Associate/PA Program, was project director for the contract, APAP Faculty Development Education and Practice. Glicken has been a PA educator for more than 20 years and is experienced in the design and implementation of major educational projects and curricula. She has been project leader on previous HRSA-funded, faculty development initiatives, including the Basic Faculty Skills Workshops. Glicken, a founding member of the APAP Faculty Development Institute, is now chair. APAP was fortunate to have Glicken’s expertise in evaluating educational outcomes and designing and implementing on-line educational coursework in its current contract.

Glicken was assisted by three project leaders: Don Pedersen, Ph.D., PA-C; Justine Strand, M.P.H., PA-C; and Michael Huckabee, M.P.A.S., PA-C. Project assistants were Greg Mennie, M.S.Ed., PA-C; Patricia Castillo, M.S., PA-C; and Wallace Boeve, M.S.P.A., PA-C. An advisory committee was comprised of six members: Adrian Llewellyn, M.P.A.S., PA-C; Rick Muma, M.P.H., PA-C; David Paulk, M.S., PA-C; Robert Philpot Jr., M.S., PA-C; Gloria Stewart, Ed.D., PA-C; and Ronald Garcia, Ph.D. Kenneth Harbert, PhD, PA-C, CHES, served as external evaluator.

Presentation Made to HRSA

The contract was presented to HRSA in November 2004 and was well-received. In funding the contract, HRSA personnel referred to the “tremendous need to develop faculty,” given the recent, rapid growth in the number of PA programs and the age of the profession when the first round of faculty will be retiring. HRSA also noted the challenge of meeting the needs of the profession’s newest faculty, whose numbers had nearly doubled in the five years immediately preceding the contract award. Finally, HRSA recognized that a faculty-developed, practice management curriculum for PA students would impact favorably on the ability of PAs to practice and increase their effective functioning in the current health care system.

Main

APAP Update - February 2005