Thank you for returning to our series on meeting the ARC-PA 5th Edition Standards in your SSR. We are now ready to respond to the requirements of the ARC-PA’s 5th Edition Standards, Appendices 14D and 14E. 

Appendix 14D requests that you provide data on your student evaluations of their clinical rotations and preceptors, the number of final clinical rotation grades of C or below, and an analysis of Student attrition and remediation in clinical rotations. 

Appendix 14E requires the presentation of data relating to summative evaluation performance, exiting student/graduate feedback, and faculty evaluation of the curriculum to assess its ability to prepare students to achieve program defined competencies. However, the matter of analyzing competencies is complex enough that I will address it in a separate blog.

For today, let’s look at how you can efficiently present evaluation data for both appendices.

Presenting Evaluations

When presenting a summary of the...

I’m glad you’ve joined us again for our series on unpacking the new and improved 5th Edition Standards, Appendix 14. In today’s blog we examine the requirements of Appendix 14C and how you may respond clearly and succinctly in your SSR.

Appendix 14C requires data on the effectiveness of a program’s didactic curriculum. Your data should include student evaluations of their didactic courses and instructors, the number of final didactic course grades at “C” or below, and the attrition and remediation in didactic courses.

Student Evaluations of Courses and Instructors

When graphing student evaluations, we list all didactic courses by their name and number. We identify faculty by the abbreviations found in the glossary (MD for Medical Director, PD for Program Director), then numerically. So, your Principal Faculty Members (glossary term PF) would be numbered as PF-1, PF-2, and so on.  

You must present data in a way that allows comparison...

Welcome back! Today, we continue unpacking ARC-PA’s 5th Edition Standards, Appendix 14 with a review of how to respond to the requirements in Appendix 14B. 

What does Appendix 14B require?

Appendix 14B requires that your PA Program submit data and analysis regarding how your enrolled students assess the sufficiency and effectiveness of administrative aspects of the program and the available institutional resources. Thus, anything defined in Appendix 14B needs to become part of your data collection process. 

For example, program administrative aspects include policies and procedures, and admissions processes and outcomes. In defining your program’s institutional resources, you should include whatever such resources support your program such as:

• Financial resources
• Human resources
• Physical resources
• Technology resources and support
• Safety and security
• Student services, which the glossary defines as academic advising, tutoring, career services, financial aid,...

For several blogs now we have examined the ARC-PA 5th Edition Standards insofar as how your PA Program can handle the increased demand for data as you create your SSR. I would like now to proceed with unpacking Appendix 14 part by part, to really drill down on the requirements of each section.

In my opinion, the 5th Edition’s Appendix 14 is a definite improvement from the previous rendition.  Things have been compartmentalized and streamlined. The differences are:

• 4th Edition Standards: emphasize modifications being chronicled in Appendix 13 M
• 5th Edition Standards: require modifications and areas needing improvement to be contained within each new appendix element. This facilitates connectivity between your data analysis, conclusions, and action plans.

Here is a breakdown of the new content by appendix sections. As we can see, in the 5th Edition, modifications and areas needing improvement are in each template, thus they are self-contained. The way in which they are...

In my previous blog entry, I shared my templates about forming committees to gather the large amount of data required by 5th Edition Standards for your SSR and how that data should flow from committee to committee. Now I would like to address the importance of tracking the decisions made within those committee meetings.

At an on-site visit, the reviewers will expect to see such minutes, and within the context of those minutes,  they will expect to identify action plans, modifications, or areas needing improvement in the faculty minutes. This is something that sometimes breaks down because the minutes may not necessarily be up to par. The essence of the minutes may not capture the information the reviewers are looking for. I’ve seen a program that actually was determined to be inadequate in terms of critical analysis, based on the fact that they didn’t have minutes.

To ensure that your faculty’s committee minutes maintain the expected standard requires...

In this blog entry, we look at how we can engage our faculties in the data assessment process. Our PA programs already operate with limited personnel resources. Now we must ask our faculty to participate in assessment in addition to other duties. 

ACA-PA 5th Edition Standards require that PA programs gather and analyze a robust amount of data. It’s a given, an understood part of the workload. Yet, many individual faculty members view comprehensive assessment as one more responsibility added beyond their purpose of teaching students.

Implementing a fully compliant assessment system, as defined by ARC-PA, requires operational committees. Yet, faculty often struggle just with acclimating to the academic environment. Being able to assimilate into teaching can be a challenge. We must train faculty, so they understand how to work with these principals.

Analyzing and tabulating data sets requires advanced strategic planning and workforce to achieve. One of the things that we see...

In our previous blog, we outlined the five challenges facing PA programs as they strive to meet ARC-PA’s 5th Edition Standards. Of the five, the most important when it comes to meeting requirements is that the commission expects all action plans and modifications in the SSR to tie directly to a data source and be documented in program minutes. You must be able to support an evidential connection. 

Data analysis carries the burden of sounding must harder, scarier, and more troublesome than it actually is. No compilation and analysis of numbers are as difficult as the one left unattended until the last minute. The biggest mistake we can make is to procrastinate or ignore the fundamental elements of data analysis until they truly are problems. In that light, we recommend following these four tenets to keep data analysis under control:

1. COLLECTION. Data collection should be regular and ongoing. Keeping a database of the data as it becomes available is usually a matter of...

One of our major focuses at Massey & Martin, LLC is the Student Success & Remediation, in which we guide Pharmacy Program administrators in assessing incoming students, offering those at risk of academic difficulty a chance to engage in prematriculation and, if necessary, organized remediation programs their didactic year of Pharmacy education. 

We see the current approach to student remediation in most Pharmacy programs following a recurring, and largely unhelpful, pattern:

1. Pharmacy students are admitted to the Pharmacy program
2. Some of those students begin struggling academically
3. Students are provided opportunity for remediation (i.e., retake a test)
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3, hoping for student success

Yet often this method fails because core problems are not addressed; a student with no time-management skills will not develop them merely because a re-test is offered. In such a case, one is simply hoping that a few extra days for this beleaguered student to squeeze in...

In our last blog, we introduced the concept of the Student Skills Development Program. In effect, this is your Pharmacy program’s chance to jump in ahead of academic difficulties that some of your students may encounter during their didactic year. Once incorporated, such a program will increase the probability of your students thriving academically and successfully graduating.

A Student Skills Development Program begins with the admissions process. Perhaps your Pharmacy program wants to admit students who don’t quite “fit the mold.” They may have a lower GPA, a history of academic difficulty, or a spotty academic record. Perhaps your program wants to admit a student who meets the program’s mission, is racially diverse, or comes from a lower social-economic geographic area. If these students appear to be at risk before ever admitting them, what can your program do?

Increasing inclusion and diversity to encompass students from all backgrounds requires a...

In our previous blog, we discussed the value of using data to determine which Pharmacy students are “at-risk” for struggling in their education, along with the idea of pre-matriculation education modules to help even the playing field for those students. It is immediately apparent, however, that while this is a beneficial step for students who have been flagged as being “at risk,” it might also miss a number of students who will quite simply have difficulties because Pharmacy education is difficult. 

The truth is that experiencing growing pains upon entering Pharmacy education is not uncommon, even for students with exceedingly high GPAs. Students experience difficulty when adjusting to the vast amount of information required to learn in Pharmacy education, to the rigors of the didactic year, which may be quite different than their previous education, or merely to the stress of graduate-level studies.

Setting aside the various other reasons students may...