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Preparing Physician Assistant/Physician Associate Students for the Unthinkable: Implementing Mass Casualty Incident
Kelly Fisher1,2,3,4,5, Ron Contreras1,2,3,4,5, Jillian Murphy1,2,3,4,5
1Kelly Fisher, MPAS, PA-C, School of Health and Human Sciences, Indiana University Master of Physician Assistant Studies, Indianapolis, Indiana.
Summary
Physician assistant (PA) students showed significant improvements in knowledge, preparedness, and confidence after participating in an immersive mass casualty incident (MCI) training program. This training is crucial for preparing future healthcare providers for community disaster response.
Area of Science:
- Medical Education
- Disaster Medicine
- Public Health Preparedness
Background:
- Mass casualty incidents (MCIs) pose significant community threats.
- Formal MCI training is recommended for healthcare professionals, including physician assistant (PA) students.
- PA graduate programs are implementing immersive training to enhance student response capabilities.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and implement an immersive mass casualty incident (MCI) training curriculum for physician assistant (PA) students.
- To assess the effectiveness of the MCI training on student knowledge, preparedness, and confidence.
- To provide a template for PA educators to integrate MCI training into their curricula.
Main Methods:
- A prospective cohort study involving 45 didactic-year PA students.
- Implementation of a novel MCI curriculum featuring practical skills stations and large-scale simulations.
- Pre- and post-training surveys assessed knowledge, preparedness, and confidence, analyzed using paired samples t-tests.
Main Results:
- Statistically significant improvements were observed in knowledge gained (42.4% to 86%).
- Perceived preparedness significantly increased from 1.8 to 4.3 on a Likert scale.
- Perceived confidence in responding to an MCI significantly improved from 2.9 to 4.3.
Conclusions:
- The developed MCI curriculum effectively enhanced PA students' knowledge, preparedness, and confidence.
- The training program serves as a viable template for PA educators.
- Formal integration of MCI training in PA education is supported to better prepare future providers for disaster response.
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