Experiential Learning: Perceptions of Traditional vs Accelerated PA Students in Course-Integrated Quality Improvement...

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is a necessary attribute required for quality medical practice. Despite being integral in advancing medicine and improving patient outcomes, research and quality improvement (QI) rarely integrate into medical education. We present our curricular course design and reveal students' perceptions of the implementation of this course. In addition, we compared physician assistant (PA) student perceptions from the first two traditional cohorts (4 years undergraduate before entry to PA program) to the accelerated 3+2 pathway cohorts (3 years pre-PA coursework followed by 2 years PA program).

Faculty developed an EBM course taught through student participation in QI projects and assessed students' perceptions of discovery, collaboration, cognitive ownership, and global sense toward general outcomes through the implementation and analysis of validated survey instruments.

All students contributed to QI projects, achieved Quality Academy Bronze certification and Silver assessment and disseminated their work at peer-reviewed conferences. Over 56.4% earned Silver certification, and 36.2% of students had their project published in a journal. Student perception of experiential impact was positive overall, with 83.3% of students minimally responding 'true' to the prompts. All students indicated that after the experience, they possessed a basic understanding of QI approaches. The accelerated students selected 'true' for all other prompts more frequently than the traditional student population.

This manuscript presents vital educational strategies, highlighting an approach and plan to extrapolate EBM principles beyond PA students and to generalize to other healthcare professionals and students. Through course completion, students met educational objectives and reaped additional benefits that positively impacted their resume building and future job prospects. By honing these skills, students are better prepared to contribute to patient care and advance the field of medicine. The accelerated students perceived greater course benefit likely due to the life-experience differences between the two cohorts, whereby the traditional students matriculated into the program with a breadth of prior knowledge obtained through years of contributions to education and careers.