Join PAEA
The Physician Assistant Education Association (PAEA) is the only national organization in the United States representing physician assistant (PA) educational programs.
Membership
The Association's members are 157 of the 159 accredited PA programs in the United States and they receive all benefits of membership, including the right to elect the Association's officers and to vote at annual business meetings. Historically, all accredited programs have elected to join the Association.
Functionally, the "members" of the Association are the faculty and staff of PAEA's member programs — the 1,500+ dedicated individuals who serve on the Association's boards and committees and educate thousands of PA students annually.
PAEA offers two additional categories of affiliation:
- Individual colleague membership: a non-voting category for individuals, not currently on the faculty or staff of one of PAEA's member programs, with an interest in PA education.
- Institutional colleague membership: a non-voting category for PA programs or other organizations not eligible for full membership with an interest in PA education. Faculty and staff of institutional colleagues receive many of the same benefits as those in full-member programs. Most institutional colleague programs receive their accreditation soon after joining PAEA. At this point, they can be quickly converted to full voting members.
PAEA Services
PAEA is committed to providing the best services possible to its members. Its major services include the premier national meeting for PA educators, the PAEA Annual Education Forum, which is held each fall in a different city around the country. The Association publishes a journal, the Journal of Physician Assistant Education, and a monthly electronic newsletter, PAEA Networker, for all PA faculty members, as well as electronic directories and an annual data report.
PAEA supports research on PA education through its PAEA Research Grants program. The Association conducts faculty development programs and continually reviews and upgrades student and graduate PA self-assessment exams.
A major enterprise developed by PAEA - one that benefits both its member programs and prospective students - is the Central Application Service for Physician Assistants (CASPA), which allows applicants to complete one electronic application and designate any number of programs to receive it.
Since the launch of the Centralized Application Service for Physician Assistants, or CASPA, in 2001, the impact of the service on PA education has increased substantially. At this time there are 157 PAEA member programs out of 159 ARC-PA accredited programs in the United States. Of these 157 PAEA member programs, 133 of these programs, or 85% of all member programs, are CASPA participating programs.
PAEA systematically collects PA program, student, and applicant data, both through CASPA and through the Annual Report on PA Educational Programs in the United States. The Association has committed significant resources to developing its research capacity and has formed a workgroup to overhaul the collection, analysis, and sharing of data.
The PAEA Faculty Development Institute (FDI) is the umbrella entity that oversees all of the Association's faculty development initiatives and workshops. The FDI is responsible for a number of annual faculty development workshops, including the Basic Skills and the Clinical Coordinators Workshop, two perennial faculty favorites. The PAEA Research Institute oversees all of the Association's research activities, including two yearly grant programs, and the production of the quarterly, peer-reviewed journal Journal of Physician Assistant Education.
The Association also sponsors an annual exhibit of educational products and devices for PA faculty at its fall Education Forum. For the past nine years, well-known publishers, software developers, and medical device manufacturers have taken advantage of the opportunity to reach the educators in the PA profession. Companies that exhibited last year brought in textbooks, patient simulators, PDA and web-based systems, and clinical medical education software.
Assessment Institute
PAEA’s new Assessment Institute (AI) is charged with overseeing the development and implementation of student testing services. The institute includes a chairperson, representatives from the PAEA Board of Directors, two at-large members, and the chairs of the PACKRAT Committee, each Rotation Exam Review Committee (RERC), and the Comprehensive Exam Review Committee. As of December 2011, the AI is in the process of identifying the chairs and members for the Rotation Exam Review Committees (RERC). The next phase includes the submission, creation, and selection of test items for each end-of-rotation exam. Requests for high-quality test items from programs will be forthcoming to program directors and clinical coordinators. Additionally, the creation of Item Writing Subcommittees for each RERC will take place in the first quarter of 2012.
End of Rotation Examinations Update: The first testing products in development will be end of rotation examinations that can be used during the clinical year. These exams will consist of 100 multiple-choice questions in the following core content areas: Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Pediatrics, Women’s Health, General Surgery, Emergency Medicine, and Behavioral Medicine. Each exam will follow a content-specific blueprint. The AI is currently finalizing the blueprints, as well as specific topic outlines, for each exam. These blueprints will be used to create balanced exam forms that will capture the topic and task areas for each particular rotation. Two unique versions of each end of rotation exam will be available at time of release with additional versions to follow.