PA educators usually take the approach of looking at what the program wants the students to be able to do and then developing the curriculum around those goals. Learning outcomes are developed around what the program wishes the students to be able to accomplish as a result of their educational experiences. Learning outcomes set the tone for the goals of the curriculum and ideally, tests are based upon the material covered by the learning outcome objectives.

The methods by which these learning outcomes are achieved are various, and based upon program expectations. Some courses in the curriculum will be based on procedural skill sets while others will emphasize the understanding of physiologic and pathophysiologic processes so that students will be able to explain these processes to their patients. Learning and education will emphasize understanding and application rather than rote memorization.

The curriculum consists of courses that support the mastery of these learning outcomes and students are assessed along the way to establish whether they have met these learning outcome goals. During didactic education, it is vital that assessments are appropriately performed and that students are tested according to these objectives. The ARC-PA requires PA programs to offer certain courses and topics, but programs are given the flexibility to cover these as they see fit.

Didactic education effectiveness needs to be evaluated by a variety of different audiences. Programs heavily rely on student and faculty evaluations of courses but may also use clinical preceptors, employers of their graduates, peer reviewers, and outside consultants in order to make judgments about educational effectiveness. Programs also use objective outcome data from the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination (PANCE) and Physician Assistant Clinical Knowledge Rating Assessment Test (PACKRAT) in order to provide additional material for analysis.

The PACKRAT is an ideal test to assess didactic effectiveness if it is given at the completion of the didactic training because student knowledge at this level is not highly influenced by the knowledge that is gained from clinical preceptorships. Programs may also use industrial benchmarking techniques in order to compare their programs against the perceived leaders in the field. Benchmarking against the best rather than just against the industry average is one technique to help programs aim for excellence rather than just meeting the average.

Assessment should be based upon measurable learning outcomes. PA programs will need to develop remediation strategies for students who fail to meet program academic standards and should develop policies that define academic dismissal for students who cannot be successfully remediated. Student assessment that is ideally performed can be utilized to improve performance of the student. In an ideal situation, students are provided with the expected learning outcomes prior to the educational offering. Students given this information prior to the lecture or discussion may use self-directed learning techniques in order to better prepare for a topic in which they have no inherent information. Through the introduction of material prior to the delivery of the lecture, the student's retention and understanding may be enhanced because of their newfound familiarity with the subject.

Family Medicine Curriculum Resource Project

The Family Medicine Curriculum Resource (FMCR) was produced by primary care educators, with day-to-day direction from an executive committee and overall oversight by an advisory committee. The FMCR was built around a theoretical framework to link medical student competencies with the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) competencies for residency training. The FMCR also provides materials for faculty development, as well as guidance for integrating topics of special interest to the federal government (such as, geriatrics, Healthy People 2010, genetics, informatics) into a 4-year continuum of medical education.