Clinical utility of PA anatomy education

Abstract

The University of Toledo Physician Assistant Studies (UT PA) program matriculated its first class in 1996. Students are drawn primarily from Ohio and Michigan and the typical graduating class performs well on the Physician Assistant National Certification Examination. UT PA students that graduated between 2006–2010 (N=145) had a first‐time mean pass rate of 97.8% (± 2.0) compared to the national mean of 93.0% (± 1.0). The UT PA human anatomy course is a traditional medical gross anatomy and neuroanatomy course taught by Anatomy faculty in the College of Medicine. It consists of 120 hours of classroom instruction that include lectures and labs. In addition to providing a broad foundation in human anatomy, this course emphasizes the practical application that anatomical knowledge has in the clinical setting. The goal of this study is to understand the value of this anatomy education for recent UT PA graduates. Recent UT PA graduates will be surveyed to assess their level of appreciation, usefulness, and applicability of the anatomy education they received and the specific anatomical subjects they have found to be most useful. The data will be sorted by the clinical specialty of the responders. This information will be used to evaluate the current course and revise it accordingly to better fit the needs of our future graduating students.