Introduction

The PA Program is a 27-month (122 credit hour) degree program designed to prepare students to competently enter the Physician Assistant profession. Graduates are eligible to sit for the Physician Assistant National Certification Examination (PANCE), and upon successfully passing this exam, are then eligible for state licensure.

The RVU/PA Program Graduates:

  • Provide quality comprehensive patient care (Patient Care)
  • Apply medical knowledge in the practice environment (Medical Knowledge)
  • Incorporate evidence-based clinical reasoning into medical decisions. (Practice-based learning)
  • Communicate effectively in clinical settings. (Interpersonal Communication Skills)
  • Demonstrate professional behaviors in educational and practice environments. (Professionalism)
  • Navigate evolving healthcare systems to provide optimal patient care (Systems-based Practice)
  • Work collaboratively within an interprofessional team (Interprofessional Collaboration)
  • Employ strategies that promote life-long personal and professional growth (Personal/Professional Development)

The PA program follows learner progression to competency across the continuum of the curriculum so graduates and the patients they will serve can be confident in their ability to provide safe, effective, patient care. The curriculum incorporates frequent assessment-for-learning strategies that allow learners to easily identify their own progression and areas of challenge. This ensures rapid identification of deficits in knowledge, skills, or attitudes, that faculty and students can collaboratively address through setting individual student-learning improvement goals. The primary goal of the RVU PA program is for its graduates to be competent in providing clinical care, and ultimately resulting in improved health outcomes.