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Postgraduate Accreditation, New
Standards Are Hot Topics for APAP in Orlando
By Steven Lane
While more than five thousand clinical PAs were descending
on Orlando for the AAPA’s 33rd Annual PA Conference, a smaller
number of PA faculty gathered for APAP’s Semiannual Meeting,
held each year in conjunction with the Academy’s annual conference.
PA educators attended workshops, roundtables, and lectures, and the
APAP board and committees conducted the business of the association.
The APAP Faculty Development Institute also presented a two-day add-on
workshop for clinical coordinators.
Hot Topics
The Update on Association Activities session (the former
Hot Topics) provided an opportunity for members to voice their concerns
and opinions on important issues for PA education and APAP. One topic
that drew extensive commentary this year was the issue of postgraduate
training for PAs. The number of postgraduate programs has been increasing
recently, and the programs are seeking an accreditation mechanism.
The Association of Postgraduate PA Programs (APPAP) and the Accreditation
Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA)
are close to agreement on a plan for accreditation.
Opposition to accreditation for the postgraduate programs
centers largely on concerns that such training might eventually become
the standard for PA graduates and that state licensing boards or hospital
privileging committees might require PAs to have postgraduate training.
However, many faculty voiced opinions in favor of accreditation standards
that might prevent what they saw as a growing trend toward PA residents
being used as cheap labor.
Faculty also considered issues surrounding the Association’s
impending move to independent management, scheduled for next spring.
(APAP is currently managed under contract by AAPA.) Among these is
the possibility of changing the Association’s name. Presenting
pros and cons on the name change, Immediate Past President Paul Lombardo
pointed out that APAP’s current name does not contain any reference
to PA education, which is the Association’s primary focus. Lombardo
also saw a name change as an opportunity to rebrand the organization
and infuse it with new energy. The board and the APAP Transition Task
Force will be seeking input from members this summer as a new name
and brand identity for APAP are developed.
CASPA Update
Ted Ruback, chair of the advisory committee for APAP’s
Central Application Service for Physician Assistants (CASPA), presented
the latest data on the service. The number of applications continues
to rise significantly, Ruback reported. There were 30,067 applications,
from 7,010 unique applicants, for the 2005 entering class — up
from 23,660 applications from 6,145 applicants for 2004. This increase
is attributable, Ruback said, to both the increasing number of programs
participating in the service — 90 programs for the 2005 cycle,
up from 80 in 2004, and to a slight increase in the number of “designations”
(individual programs the applicant wants his or her application sent
to) — up from the 2004 average of 3.94 per applicant to 4.3 for
the 2005 class. Applicant characteristics in terms of gender, ethnicity,
GPA, and health care experience continued to hold fairly steady.
Student Writing Awards
The three winners of the APAP Student Writing Competition
received prizes and presented their papers in a session moderated
by Robert D. Hadley, a member of the selection committee. Winners
were: first place, Anita Makowski, University of Iowa PA Program,
for her entry, “Pediatric Pain: Are We Doing Enough?”; second
place, Kim M. Rutter, Marquette University PA Program, for “Measuring
Functional Response to Opioid Therapy in Chronic Nonmalignant Pain:
A Literature Review and Recommendation”; and third place, Kevin
T. Wyne, University of Iowa PA Program, for “Tremor Diagnosis
and Treatment.”
Editor Tanya Gregory and Editor in Chief Sarah Zarbock
from the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants
(JAAPA), which has sponsored the Student Writing Competition for the
past five years, presented checks and certificates to the winning
students. Keir Todd, chair of the Student Research Affairs Subcommittee
of the APAP Research Institute, adjudicated the process for a fifth
year.
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First place winner Anita Makowski
with her award
from JAAPA’s Editor in Chief Sarah Zarbock (left)
and Editor Tanya Gregory (right).
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Educational Sessions
Faculty attendees took advantage of a full day of workshops,
roundtables, and panel presentations. A few of them offered CME credit,
such as the workshop The Spiritual History: Innovations for PA Programs,
which drew both PA faculty and clinicians to learn about a spiritual
history-taking tool used to assess patients’
faith and how they would like it addressed in their care. Other popular
sessions included The Culture of Cheating: From the Classroom to the
Exam Room, Learning Style Assessment: When Learning and Culture Clash,
and The Four Major Appeals: A Case-based Approach to Ethical Decision-making
Instruction.
Board Meeting
In addition to the usual reports, the APAP Board of
Directors also heard testimony from several representatives of community
college-based PA programs, who are concerned about the repercussions
for their programs of a new requirement in ARC-PA’s
Standards: standard A1.01a, which requires that PA programs must be
sponsored by institutions that can offer at least a bachelor’s
degree. The standard does not apply to existing community college-based
programs, which are protected by a “grandfather clause,”
but PA faculty from those programs said they feared that the prohibition
would one day be extended to their programs as well. More immediately,
they said that they believed the diversity of the profession would
suffer because community college programs may have higher minority
enrollments.
APAP’s endorsement of the
Standards comes not from its Board of Directors but from its member
programs, which were sent electronic ballots for a vote on the Standards
endorsement on June 28. The board has encouraged programs to endorse
the Standards as a whole.
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