Program Goals
Goals of the Program
- To provide a comprehensive, patient- and family-centered educational experience with emphasis on evidence-based medicine, clinical application of medical knowledge, effective communication skills, and life-long learning.
- To promote an educational culture that values professionalism, diversity, inclusivity, and compassion.
- To produce physician assistants who are prepared to practice in any discipline of medicine and in any health care environment.
- To foster an atmosphere of interprofessional collaboration and engagement within the university, and communities across the state of AR.
- To produce practicing physician assistants who will improve access to healthcare for the residents of Arkansas.
Success of UAMS in Accomplishing the Goals of the PA Program
- To provide a comprehensive, patient- and family-centered educational experience with emphasis on evidence-based medicine, clinical application of medical knowledge, effective communication skills, and life-long learning.
Success of Achieving Goal:
- Provide a curriculum in which courses are comprehensive and correlate together to foster learning.
- Provide patient and family centered educational experiences across the curriculum, including 10 core clinical rotations and 2 elective rotations in the clinical phase.
- Provide two courses and a Capstone Project that emphasize evidence-based medicine.
- Provide early patient experience in the didactic curriculum and the case-based clinical reasoning courses to emphasize clinical application of medical knowledge.
- Provide two courses that emphasize patient communication skills.
- To promote an educational culture that values professionalism, diversity, inclusivity, and compassion.
Success of Achieving Goal:
- Demonstrate professionalism, integrity, ethical behavior, cultural awareness, and compassion by students who are continuously evaluated for professionalism during the didactic and clinical phases of the program.
- Faculty and staff serve as role models for students and exhibiting professionalism, integrity, ethical behavior, cultural awareness and compassion.
- Provide two didactic courses that emphasize cultural competency.
- Provide clinical experiences in underserved areas.
- Provide service-learning experiences across the life span and work with diverse groups.
- Strive for diversity of faculty, staff and students.
- To produce physician assistants who are prepared to practice in any discipline of medicine and in any health care environment.
Success of Achieving Goal: 5-year average – 96% Graduation Rate and 89% 1st time PANCE Pass Rate
- To foster an atmosphere of interprofessional collaboration and engagement within the university, and communities across the state of AR.
Success of Achieving Goal:
- Provide inter-professional education experiences in the didactic and clinical phases of the program.
- Provide Service-learning experiences in the didactic phase of the program.
- Participate with the student-led, inter-professional 12th Street Health and Wellness Center.
- To produce practicing physician assistants who will improve access to healthcare for the residents of Arkansas.
Success of Achieving Goal: 5-year average – 96% Graduation Rate