Journal of allied health
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Journal of allied health · Nov 1984
An interdisciplinary teaching program in geriatrics for physician's assistants.
An interdisciplinary curriculum committee within the Division of Family Medicine, Stanford University Medical Center, developed and taught a beginning course in clinical geriatrics for medical students and student physician's assistants, physical therapists, and nurse practitioners. Through a series of Saturday classes held in community facilities serving seniors, physician's assistant students had the opportunity to learn clinical geriatrics from a faculty team including a physician's assistant, physician, nurse, physical therapist, social worker, gerontologist, and health educator. Local seniors served as consumer consultants and models of health and vigor. ⋯ In this well-received course, the role of the physician's assistant in health care was made evident to their future physician employers and physical therapy co-workers through faculty modeling as well as through informal contacts and patient conferences. Older people constitute a growing and increasingly medically underserved population. Team training may serve to stimulate physician's assistant students to include geriatrics in their career plans while educating their future physician employers about their role.
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Journal of allied health · Nov 1984
Recertification: toward the development of standards for assuring continued competence.
NCCPA, in collaboration with NBME, has begun an investigation that may lead to the development of standards for measuring continued competence. In 1981, the 1980 Primary Care Physician's Assistants Certification Examination was administered as a recertification examination to 1,166 PAs who were originally certified in 1975. The scores were standardized by using the standardization constants for the 1980 Certification Examination reference group. ⋯ Correlations calculated between recertificants' performance on their original certification examination and their performance on the recertification examination showed a positive relationship between the two examinations. Their performance on a variety of biographical variables was also analyzed, and the only variable that significantly changed their performance was their current employment status. The validity of the test for making judgments about the competence of experienced practitioners was not addressed by the current study and is a crucial question in evaluating the test as a recertification instrument.