Inaugural PA Online Class - YALE

[EMNP]

Your thoughts?

Inaugural PA Online Class Celebrates White Coat Ceremony

https://medicine.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=16955

[Rocksteady]

Bound to happen. 

[CAAdmission]

Why'd they have to come together in person for the white coat ceremony? Is that more important than the education part?

[camoman1234]

Look at the price tag...$97,300 per their estimate, but below it has it broken down in 3 years totaling, $94,500 for tuition ONLY. The total cost/budget per their estimate for all the fees, equipment, room and board, books, travel, etc =   $157, 780. Even if you got rid of the "room and board" it would still cost $116,591. NO THANK YOU for that cost plus the online portion. This is solely for the NAME only. This is crazy! Plus their prerequisites course never expire...? So I could take anatomy in 1999 and apply for next year...that does not seem right...

[Reality Check 2]

Online to me is like telemedicine - no thank you

[Marinejiujitsu]

Half of those girls in that class look like the same person.

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[EMEDPA]

3 hours ago, Reality Check 2 said:

Online to me is like telemedicine - no thank you

agree

[EMEDPA]

1 hour ago, Marinejiujitsu said:

Half of those girls in that class look like the same person.

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stepford PAs....:)

only 11 men in that pic and 2 of them are faculty for a class of 42....

[Marinejiujitsu]

stepford PAs....:)
only 11 men in that pic and 2 of them are faculty for a class of 42....

Haha. I know. My PA class didn't look half as professional. Lol.

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[gbrothers98]

This will put those marginal programs on notice across the country. Hard to charge same amount of money and say you are providing better education by having the student move several states and drive to campus every day.

Stay at home, don't uproot your life, not away from community for months and then return to try to find a job. This is a long time coming. Will be interesting to see if they can incorporate more active learning into the curriculum this way, a challenge on a good day, probably more so with the online component.

Fast forward several years, lot of good information will come out of this. Answer questions concerning online learning and higher levels of training. My bet is that the naysayers will be proven wrong.

George

[Acebecker]

George,

Unfortunately, I don't agree.  I don't think that online learning is the path to excellence for the PA profession.  Yes, it will put marginal programs on notice.  Great that they will change their ways.  But online programs make us look like buffoons.  It's a lowest common denominator thing.  We will receive the reputation of the lowest 1/2 of the Yale class, not the best of them.  And Yale just removed barriers that kept unmotivated people out of PA school.  Instead of requiring extreme commitment and making that a visible thing by requiring people to move to a new state and learn a new system, now people are able to become PAs with minimal time invested - whatever they feel they can get by with.  They have less skin in the game and when you have little or no skin in the game, the value of the commodity declines.

 

Andrew

[corpsman89]

First it was expanding the definition of "PCE"

Then it was reducing the hours of said PCE

Then it was reducing the hours of PCE to Nothing. 

Now it is online. 

We are losing every argument that shows that PAs have better education and training. These arguments are more important than ever too. 

[Joelseff]

Haha. I know. My PA class didn't look half as professional. Lol.

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I think there one or two professional looking dudes in that bunch! [emoji6]

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[Joelseff]

Why'd they have to come together in person for the white coat ceremony? Is that more important than the education part?

Group Selfies! [emoji991]

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[Boatswain2PA]

I've said the NPs could put us out of business if they brought their educational standards up to ours (like the DOs did the MDs).

But now it looks like we are going to put ourselves out of business by (continuing to) bringing our educational standards down to theirs.

[Reality Check 2]

Curious to see this group on clinical rotations without any one on one or face time in clinical learning situations. 

I would like to interview anonymously educated PAs and let you know if I could pick out the onliners. Bet I could.....

Travesty to our profession that has long stood out for our exceptional patient interactions, empathy and service. Sad to see it happen.

[harden4mvp]

40 minutes ago, Reality Check 2 said:

Curious to see this group on clinical rotations without any one on one or face time in clinical learning situations. 

I would like to interview anonymously educated PAs and let you know if I could pick out the onliners. Bet I could.....

Travesty to our profession that has long stood out for our exceptional patient interactions, empathy and service. Sad to see it happen.

We spend 3 weeks on the Yale campus learning physical exam and patient assessment skills, just as any other PA program does, only condensed. We also complete full body dissections. 

[Reality Check 2]

Just now, eliam22 said:

We spend 3 weeks on the Yale campus learning physical exam and patient assessment skills, just as any other PA program does, only condensed. We also complete full body dissections. 

Well - I spent 3 MONTHS doing anatomy and physiology with PT students, bio med students and had med school proctors - all people I still work with today and developed relationships with. 

We did physical exam skills EVERY SINGLE WEEK FOR OVER A YEAR before rotations. We did clinical situations and worked with our professors one on one and in groups.  We had constant hospital assignments and learning with small groups and proctors. Our on campus time was immense and necessary. 

There is absolutely no substitute for on site, on campus medical training - period. Done this for 26 years and have been an educator for close to 20 of that. 

No one will ever convince me that this drive through type of education is ok or sufficient for this profession. Maybe accounting or even paralegal but not hands on medicine. 

Best wishes to you. 

[corpsman89]

2 minutes ago, eliam22 said:

We spend 3 weeks on the Yale campus learning physical exam and patient assessment skills, just as any other PA program does, only condensed. We also complete full body dissections. 

3 Weeks! All at once!? That's a sure fire way to learn it quick and forget it quick! 

We learn physical exam skills over 5 months of time. Each week is dedicated to a new body system, while learning about said body system in the classroom. Then we move on to doing actual physical exams on actual patients within the hospital. This is before we even start clinical rotation. 3 weeks is a joke. 

[harden4mvp]

1 minute ago, corpsman89 said:

3 Weeks! All at once!? That's a sure fire way to learn it quick and forget it quick! 

We learn physical exam skills over 5 months of time. Each week is dedicated to a new body system, while learning about said body system in the classroom. Then we move on to doing actual physical exams on actual patients within the hospital. This is before we even start clinical rotation. 3 weeks is a joke. 

I am sorry you feel so dismissive about change, but it's happening and it is working. Only 4 months into the didactic year, we have begun visiting primary care clinics to work aside PAs and/or physicians and practice the skills we have already learned, and this is before clinical rotations start in January. 

[harden4mvp]

10 minutes ago, Reality Check 2 said:

Well - I spent 3 MONTHS doing anatomy and physiology with PT students, bio med students and had med school proctors - all people I still work with today and developed relationships with. 

We did physical exam skills EVERY SINGLE WEEK FOR OVER A YEAR before rotations. We did clinical situations and worked with our professors one on one and in groups.  We had constant hospital assignments and learning with small groups and proctors. Our on campus time was immense and necessary. 

There is absolutely no substitute for on site, on campus medical training - period. Done this for 26 years and have been an educator for close to 20 of that. 

No one will ever convince me that this drive through type of education is ok or sufficient for this profession. Maybe accounting or even paralegal but not hands on medicine. 

Best wishes to you. 

Our program also puts us in situations where we must constantly work with groups (problem-based, team-based learning) and instead of the hospital assignments, we have been placed in primary care clinics 3 months into didactic year to work alongside PAs and/or physicians, and practice the skills we have learned in person on real patients under PA/physician supervision. I was just like you: negative, rude and dismissive about change, especially when it involves medical education, but if you spend a little time reading through the website and understanding what we are required to do, I am certain you will change your mind. If not, then so be it. 

[modernlily16]

On 4/6/2018 at 2:07 AM, EMEDPA said:

stepford PAs....:)

only 11 men in that pic and 2 of them are faculty for a class of 42....

? aren't majority of the PA programs today filled by 70-80% women already? irrelevant comment.

[Reality Check 2]

 

14 minutes ago, mcclane said:

The prerequisite knowledge base an individual must acquire today prior to becoming a provider is about 50 fold greater than what you had to assimilate 25 years ago. Trying to compare programs / curricula pushing 3 decades apart is insanity.

Your statements are incorrect. 

Never bunk the old my friend. We learned without the internet, without computers really. We hand wrote notes, read real books and hauled them around. We read EKGs without any help from the machine. We calculated med doses with a real calculator - no smart phone, no epocrates.

Don't bunk the old - we learned the same stuff - seriously - we did - we just learned it more manually and with less technology. It doesn't make us dumb or dumber or harder to teach. There is nothing new today that students have to know that we did not. 

The curricula does not change - same rotations, same governing bodies, same PANCE/PANRE. 

My skill set is pretty good at 26 yrs and my knowledge base expands daily - THAT is the part of medicine - NEVER quit learning.

But, seriously - don't bunk the old - they are your teachers.

 

[Gordon, PA-C]

Does this Yale program actually assign the preceptors, contact them regularly, establish expectations, have a mechanized formal way of giving feedback to the school?

Or does Yale simply tell its PA students "have fun googling up random clinics to beg for preceptors" like so many NP programs do?

Traditional med/PA schools have faculty/preceptors whose primary mission is education.  Can you tell me a bunch of random primary clinics scattered across the country with no formal relationship to the the school have the same primary mission?  I seriously doubt it.  

My guess is that the clinical rotations end up being along the lines of merely shadowing a preceptor with very little real learning involved.  

Also somebody explain to me why this program costs such an outrageous amount of money?  The way I figure it Yale is expending very little resources for clinical "rotations" so therefore the cost should be a lot cheaper.  

[harden4mvp]

1 hour ago, Reality Check 2 said:

 

Your statements are incorrect. 

Never bunk the old my friend. We learned without the internet, without computers really. We hand wrote notes, read real books and hauled them around. We read EKGs without any help from the machine. We calculated med doses with a real calculator - no smart phone, no epocrates.

Don't bunk the old - we learned the same stuff - seriously - we did - we just learned it more manually and with less technology. It doesn't make us dumb or dumber or harder to teach. There is nothing new today that students have to know that we did not. 

The curricula does not change - same rotations, same governing bodies, same PANCE/PANRE. 

My skill set is pretty good at 26 yrs and my knowledge base expands daily - THAT is the part of medicine - NEVER quit learning.

But, seriously - don't bunk the old - they are your teachers.

 

Honestly, on the same note I could say "don't bunk the new" a thousand times over and over. We are learning medicine through live, online lectures with groups of 10 in a virtual classroom with a Yale faculty member. This is for the people in rural Montana or South Dakota who don't have access to a nearby PA school. This is for the single mom with 2 kids or the medic who can't move their family but wants to fulfill their dream, but have the intelligence, drive and motivation to pursue medicine, no matter what it takes. Don't bunk the new - learning online doesn't make us dumb or dumber or harder to teach. It means we are revolutionizing and utilizing the amazing technology available to us. Again, our curriculum doesn't change. We have the same in-person rotations, same governing bodies that approved our program and made sure that we are fulfilling all the requirements, and the same PANCE/PANRE. I hope the next time you try to talk down on people trying to make a difference in this world that you reconsider.