I’m pleased you’ve joined me once more for the Massey Martin, LLC newsletter. We’re in the middle of an important series regarding the role and duties of the Success Coach, an integral piece of our Student Success Coaching Model. Not an academic advisor, not an instructor, the Success Coach’s relationship with the learner is one of accountability and improvements in “how to learn” so that PA students see results not only academically, but professionally. 

In our last issue, we discussed how the Success Coach / Learner relationship begins with a contractual understanding. As promised, today’s issue looks at the coaching session itself.

Conducting a coaching session

The contract between the Success Coach and Learner has already established what is expected of both parties to make the most of sessions together. Time is of the essence in this situation, obviously to help the struggling learner as quickly as possible, but also because...

Welcome back to the Massey Martin newsletter. Today I continue my series focusing on the Student Success Coaching Model and, particularly, the role of the Success Coach. In this issue we’ll examine how the Success Coach relates to the students who come for assistance, in a way that is different from that of an advisor, remediator, or instructor. 

You will recall from our previous issue that a Success Coach’s purpose is to create a custom program of accountability, and provide a safe environment for students to address challenges.

How can this be accomplished?

Success Coach versus Academic Advisor

 The role of a coach must be clearly defined to extend the benefits of a coaching relationship beyond traditional mentoring and advising.  An advisor, for example, has responsibilities such as assisting in course scheduling or managing curricular obligations, writing letters of recommendation, assisting in performance review, and other academic requirements....

Welcome back to the Massey Martin LLC newsletter. As you know, Massey Martin LLC assists PA educators with program development by offering personalized, interactive mentoring and consulting services that guide PA Programs to achieve and maintain accreditation. In past newsletters, we have focused on the Student Success Coaching Model as a way to improve PA student outcomes, beginning almost the moment applicants are accepted to your program. 

In doing so, we delineated the three major roles of the participants in such a program, namely: 

• the faculty, who can greatly benefit from the approach’s timeliness and efficiency in helping their students flourish;
• the students themselves, who learn “how to learn” and become their own best resource; and
• the Success Coach, the guide who combines the previous two participants with the proven processes of the Student Success Coaching Model. Of these three participating groups, it is the Success Coach that is the...

I hope you have enjoyed our current series on future trends in PA education, and that these issues have sparked questions, debate, and excitement regarding where our field is heading. In today’s final installment of the series, I propose two considerations for how these trends will change needs in the faculty, staff, and administration of PA programs.

Impact on faculty

Changes in PA education will result in increased pressure on faculty to elevate credentials to the doctoral level. The PA profession can follow the PT profession as an analog. When the DPT degree came into existence, all faculty were required to obtain earned doctorates. Possessing a clinical doctorate such as the DPT is no longer sufficient. State and regional accrediting agencies may require EdD/PhD degrees for most faculty to teach in a doctoral granting program.  

PA programs will devote more resources to assessment. The volume and complexity of data analysis is already outstripping many PA...

Welcome back to our continuing newsletter series on future trends in PA Education. Last time we finished a look at the potential of hybrid education in our programs. Today we address the entry-level degree. 

The debate regarding the terminal degree has been in existence since the beginning of the PA education profession. In 1988 the baccalaureate degree was the entry-level degree. In 2001 the master’s degree became an entry-level degree. The transition to an entry-level doctorate is inevitable, for better or worse. 

What will it mean for students and programs?

Currently, the ARC-PA is not credentialed to accredit entry-level doctoral PA programs. If PAEA/AAPA adopts the doctoral degree as the entry-level credential, accreditation will soon follow. 

An entry-level doctorate comes with several implications. First, how will the curriculum change? Most likely, when looking at the current add-on doctorates, there will be additional coursework related to a capstone or...

Thank you for joining us once again! In our previous two newsletters, we have discussed the benefits of hybrid learning (a combination of online and classroom learning) to PA education of the future. Today, I present the components of design for just such a PA program.

Curricular Design 

The overall approach to the didactic instruction in each course is to integrate asynchronous and synchronous online didactic courses as primary methodology, with focused, in-person “immersion” laboratory experiences associated with each didactic course. 

The didactic content is presented asynchronously, like an in-class lecture, but using interactive state-of-the-art online educational activities (including virtual patients, high-definition recording and submission of student skills, and telemedicine-style encounters with standardized patient actors) to promote knowledge acquisition. Following the assignment and completion of these asynchronous activities, synchronous online...

In our previous newsletter, I began this series on the direction I see PA education, and in fact, the PA profession, heading in the next decade. My first prediction was that competency-based learning and the hybrid classroom will become prominent methods of teaching our students. Today I want to explore this topic further, discussing how a hybrid classroom prepares our medical students for the hybrid workforce.

Hybrid education is here to stay

As PA education faces its post-COVID future, hybrid education will remain in programs that have embraced it, spread across existing programs, and be a consideration (and likely a solid part) of the design and development of new programs seeking provisional accreditation. 

Evidence supporting hybrid PA education expands beyond the anecdotal stories told by programs persisting through the 2020-21 pandemic in the form of existing distance and hybrid programs that have provided proof of the concept. 

Additionally, programs considering...

In today’s newsletter, we begin a series looking at what lies ahead for PA education. For three decades, I have worked in PA education, which gives me the advantage of seeing history in the making, watching the profession and its training evolve through the years. While I can’t claim to know the future, I do have several theories about where PA education is going in the next decade. I believe we have some big changes coming our way!

This series will review and build on Chapter 10 of the book I co-wrote with Helen Martin, CHSC, PA-C, DFAAPA, Learning to Love Data.  

So, let’s begin! 

Online/Hybrid Instructional Models

In 2017 Yale University opened the first online PA program in the United States. This was met with such extreme backlash that the alumni of Yale University petitioned against its very existence, although online nurse practitioner programs had existed for several years. The negativity was largely a result of the wide spectrum of quality...

In today’s newsletter, we conclude our series on assessment-driven research opportunities for PA faculty.  In our previous edition, we discussed the point system used to determine tenure and promotion among university faculty members. As promised, I now present a typical chart of point values used, with some suggestions below on how the activities within can be adjusted and applied to PA faculty.

Point Values for Assessment

PA faculty are encouraged to become familiar with the required points and select specific aspects to tackle each year. Finally, clarify whether a doctoral degree is required. In many cases a master’s degree is the terminal degree. If a doctoral degree is required, any projects required for the degree can be maximized by disseminating this in journals and presentations, etc.

For your PA faculty, when dealing with a point system such as the one outlined above:

• Clarify the definition of a peer-reviewed journal as well as the manuscript citation...

In our past three newsletters, we looked at the individual steps for creating and conducting scholarship projects for PA educators. Now let us turn our attention to how scholarship, and other factors, figure into the tenure possibilities for PA educators.

The words “tenure” and “promotion” may strike fear into any academic faculty member in higher education. The vast majority of faculty in colleges and universities possess an earned doctorate. This provides some preparation for the obligatory research and scholarly activities required to earn tenure. 

However, PA faculty often do not have research and scholarly backgrounds when they enter higher education, which can result in tenure-track seeming insurmountable. This and our next newsletter are designed to prove that achieving tenure and promotion is definitely within the grasp of any PA faculty member.

According to the PAEA 4th faculty report (2020), 63% of faculty are reported to be on an academic...