APAP Committee Report, September 10, 2002
Committee Name: APAP Research and Review Committee
Committee Chair: Rick Dehn, MPA, PA-C
Current Activities:
--Review of survey instruments utilized for surveying APAP member programs, faculty, or students. (ongoing).
--Peer-review of the APAP Research Institute small grant program applications as needed per grant cycle (ongoing).
--Peer-review of proposals for faculty research presentations for fall conference as needed (ongoing).
--Peer-review of proposals for research poster presentations for fall conference as needed (ongoing).
--Discussions continue to be held with NCCPA about cooperation with research activities. The R&R Chair is a member of the NCCPA Research Committee and will attend the NCCPA Research Committee meeting in September 2002 in Atlanta.
--The Research and Review Committee will again conduct the student writing competition this year (ongoing). The J.Peter Nyquist Student Writing Contest was renamed the APAP Student Writing Competition at the winter APAP board meeting. The first place award will be named the J.Peter Nyquist award. I. Keir Todd, MEd, PA-C, from Central Michigan University PA Program will continue to administer the competition. JAAPA is again generously sponsoring the awards of cash prizes, transportation, and lodging for the winners
--The committee supports an add-on day workshop done in cooperation with the FDI titled “Designing and Writing a Successful Research Proposal” for the November 2002 APAP meeting directed at improving the quality of research proposals and increasing the number of PA faculty writing research proposals. Rick Dehn is the lead faculty for this for this workshop, and faculty have been recruited from this committee.
--The committee is planning an add-on day dedicated to “Research in the PA Profession” for October 2003 APAP meeting directed at showcasing the research done on the PA profession, including work done by non-PA researchers who research the PA profession. Rod Hooker is responsible for suggesting this proposal and submitting it to APAP staff.
--The Research and Review Committee Chair has been working with the Research Institute Chair Gene Jones, Don Pedersen, and David Asprey and Jim Cawley from the BOD to restructure the organization of the RI and the R&R (see further discussion of this issue below in Accomplishments/Success Stories section).
Completion dates: As above
Accomplishments/Success Stories:
--The process of approving survey instruments is ongoing and appears to be working smoothly. Approved surveys are posted on committee's web site at http://paprogram.medicine.uiowa.edu/randr. The process of reviewing surveys is intended to avoid duplication in surveys, improve the quality of research done on the PA education system, and to prevent "survey burnout" that would negatively impact all of our research efforts. Since last April 1,2001, 12 surveys have been approved with several others currently in suggested revisions.
--As predicted by this committee last year, there has been an increase in both the number of original papers/abstracts and posters submitted for the November 2002 APAP meeting. 17 papers/abstracts were accepted for presentation and 23 posters were accepted for display. Initially only 2 hours were allocated for abstract/paper presentations, but after negotiations with APAP staff 3.75 hours will be available, which is still inadequate. Since one of APAP’s missions is to provide a venue for faculty advancement as well as dissemination of PA education information, it is important that adequate time be allocated at the conference for this purpose. It is likely that the number of proposals will increase in the future given the current trend of PA faculty now occupying positions that require these types of activities for promotion. This committee and the board will need to continue to take actions that will ensure this time is available at future APAP conferences.
--The Research and Review Committee has been providing feedback on unsuccessful proposals to the grant authors beginning with the Spring 2001 cycle. This process was made available again for proposals from the Spring 2002 cycle. Approximately 40% of unsuccessful PIs requested feedback on their proposals.
--In anticipation of the restructuring of APAP's committee system, plans are being drawn up to delegate Research and Review Committee activities to smaller task-focused subcommittees. Typically these committees will contain 3-6 members and will require a substantial work commitment for a limited period of time. The first attempt at this process was a subcommittee formed to re-write the small grants guidelines, and it has since been utilized for the NCCPA research reviews in the Spring of 2001 and 2002. In the Fall of 2001 a second subcommittee was formed to manage the Research Institute small research review process, and this has also been successful. The intent is to develop a cadre of experienced subcommittee members for each activity in order to foster institution memory and stability in ongoing processes, and to compartmentalize the work demands on volunteers to predictable times. So far these experiments in organization appear to be quite successful and will be continued/expanded into other activities of the Research Institute and Research and Review Committee. Current plans are to merge the functions of the Research and Review Committee into the existing Research Institute by making each distinct R&R duty the responsibility of a RI subcommittee. The RI board would consist of the chair of each of these subcommittees as well as a distinct RI chair and a few other appointees representing other APAP interests. It is anticipated that the BOD will approve this proposed restructuring at the November 2002 meeting, and if this is done a call will go out to the APAP membership for those interested in chairing the various subcommittees.
--NCCPA/APAP Research Grant review subcommittee, consisting of co-chairs Emil Petrusa and Rick Dehn, and NCCPA members Elaine Grant and George Thomas, and APAP members Bill Tozier, Pat Kelly selected three proposals out of 19 for funding. NCCPA contributed $20,000 for the spring research grant cycle, and awards were presented at the May 2002 meeting in Boston. NCCPA should be recognized for its generous support of PA research. The funded proposals were:
●Meredith Davison, PhD, Frank Prerost, PhD, and Phoebe Foltz, MMS, PA-C, from the Midwestern University PA Program in Downers Grove, Illinois, were awarded $4,000 for their submission, “Attitudes of Psychiatrists toward Employment of PAs in Psychiatry/Behavioral Medicine: Stage 2.”
●Patricia Guerra, MPAS, PAC, from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center PA Program in Dallas was awarded $4,550 for “What Do Physician Assistants Prescribe?”
●Mary Warner, MMSc, PAC, from the Yale University School of Medicine PA Program, New Haven, Connecticut, received $8,576 for “The Graduate Record Examination and Undergraduate Grade Point Average as Predictors of First-Year Academic Performance in Graduate Level PA Programs.”
--The 23 poster presentations to be displayed at the November 2002 APAP meeting in Miami will be invited without further peer review for display at AAPA May 2003 conference under an agreement with CSAC (AAPA). It is projected that allowing APAP poster presenters to also display at the May AAPA meeting without additional peer review will encourage greater participation in APAP’s poster activities and increase the number of ways PA faculty can participate in activities supportive of promotion and tenure.
--Three APAP Research and Review Committee Members, Gene Jones, Dennis Blessing, and Pat Kelly, have been appointed to the AAPA-IAC - Research Advisory Subcommittee for 2002-2003.
Concerns:
--APAP member faculty are responding to increasing pressure due to the demands of promotion and tenure. This is likely due to several factors, including the conversion of programs toward awarding advanced degrees and a generalized movement of PA programs away from special program status toward joining their institution’s mainstream academic units; this has resulted in increasing numbers of PA faculty being required to perform academic promotion and tenure activities. Since participation in professional academic activities on a national level is typically an important part of academic promotion and tenure processes, this committee has seen a sharp increase in the number of proposals for presentation of original work. In order to effectively provide for our members' needs in this area, APAP will need to provide adequate time and resources for faculty presentation activities at out national meeting(s) since APAP is one of the only national venues available to PA faculty where this can be done. As one variation of how to accomplish this, a poster-presentation option was revived for the Fall 2001 conference, and has proved to be very popular. In response to the unprecedented number of faculty presentation submissions, an extra hour of faculty presentation time was scheduled for the Fall 2001 meeting. This proved to be barely enough, and again this year we have proposal increases that have necessitated over four hours of conference time, which at the time of this report was still unavailable. This trend is likely to increase; therefore next year more time should be scheduled at the October meeting for faculty presentation, and plans should be made for a larger number of poster displays. In anticipation of next year's demand, possibly as much as six hours of presentation time should be allocated, as well as room for up to 30 posters. Beyond the Fall 2003 conference, this trend is still likely to continue, so APAP will need to devise ways to accommodate member PA faculty demand for presentation of original work.
--PA students are beginning to submit their research as poster presentation. This is an excellent opportunity for students work to be acknowledged, and is a great way for PA faculty to display their research skills in how they mentor their students. Additionally, this process can be developed to provide APAP with an opportunity to positively interact with the student population on a national level. Similar to the increase in faculty presentations, demand for this venue will certainly increase as student research activity increases, thus accommodations will need to be made in conference planning to make sure our conference can support this likely growth.
--This committee has found it difficult to plan and implement research curriculum at APAP meetings. This is due to this committee’s duties and responsibilities in this area overlapping with those of the Education Committee. For example, the Research Track presented at the October 2001 meeting (a well-received series of presentations) took three years to bring to our members because it was derailed in 1999 and 2000 by this committee overlap. Similar problems of overlapping committee responsibilities have occurred with other R&R activities. This structural problem works to the detriment of this committee being able to offer research resources to the APAP membership, and thus should be addressed by the BOD. This year the November 2002 research workshops (with the exception of the add-on day workshop) were reviewed and selected by the Education Committee without any Research and Review Committee input. This committee believes that research curriculum for the APAP conferences should be selected and reviewed by this committee. It is hoped that future APAP committee reorganization will address this problem.
--At the March 2002 NCCPA Cluster Meetings, the NCCPA Research Committee made a formal request to present data about their testing results to the APAP membership. Ultimately there was not dedicated time to allow this, and NCCPA eventually decided to present their data as a workshop, which is not an ideal venue in light that peer review for this process is done by the Education Committee only. This introduces the issue of how to manage requests by PA groups closely allied to APAP that would like to present their research data that may be of interest to APAP members. These types of request could ultimately come out of research time and who gets what could be adjudicated by one of the RI subcommittees, however currently RI or research in general has no dedicated time to allocate at the conferences. In the future it is likely that more requests will come from outside organizations that want to present PA data, and it is in APAP’s best interest that this be accommodated in order to develop a process where APAP is the clearinghouse of PA research. A process for allocating time for these requests will need to be developed and a mechanism for evaluating and facilitating these requests will need to be devised.
Budget Issues:
--The Spring 2003 NCCPA/APAP research grant process will receive a $25,000 contribution from NCCPA for APAP to administer $20,000 in research grants for Year 2003 awards.
--APAP staff administers the funding ($6000 from JAAPA) for the J. Peter Nyquist Student Writing Contest.
--$20,000 will be required to fund the APAP Research Institute Research Grants fall 2002 cycle (allocated). Similar funding will be necessary in 2003.
--The committee is planning an add-on day dedicated to “Research in the PA Profession” for the October 2003 fall APAP meeting directed at showcasing all the research done on the PA profession, which is projected to be funded by an additional registration fee and possibly some outside grant money. Rod Hooker will be responsible for developing this proposal.
Board Action Required: The Research and Review Committee will likely send proposals to the BOD at the November 2003 meeting that need attention:
--The Research and Review Committee requested at the May BOD meeting that APAP establish a student research award to be given annually at either the fall or spring meetings, and that development of this award be moved forward so that a funding source can be found. The board advised a specific proposal be developed, and Dennis Blessing has agreed to construct a plan to present to the board in November 2002.
--The Research and Review Committee again requests that the board consider that additional time and space be made available at the fall conference for paper/abstract faculty presentations and poster presentations.
--The Research and Review Committee requests that board consider restructuring how the content of APAP conferences is determined, particularly in how much time is allocated to research-related curriculum, and also consider that research curriculum be selected and peer reviewed by the Research and Review Committee or the Research Institute rather than the Education Committee.
Respectfully submitted
Rick Dehn, MPA, PA-C