Meet our members – the incredible educators training the next generation of talented, innovative, compassionate healthcare providers. Learn how PA educators across the country are working to overcome significant challenges, create more diverse and inclusive communities, and strengthen their programs for the future.
Putting Learning Into Practice
In this new article series, we are featuring how our members are taking what they have learned through the professional development opportunities offered by PAEA and applying it to practice.
Share Your Learning Story With Us
Submit InformationThe PAEA Vignette Project
Sharing your stories to explore the experiences of underrepresented in medicine faculty and their allies.
This project will collect, review, and organize a collective of vignettes from underrepresented in medicine faculty (URiM) and their bold allies. From your shared stories, we will be able to provide a useful resource aimed at understanding the experiences of URiM faculty and facilitate critical conversations to transform higher graduate medical education environments. Vignettes are short, descriptive stories of an incident that occurred within a PA program that provides leadership and faculty of examples that URiM faculty struggle with (i.e, microaggressions, lower student evaluations, just to name a few). For URiM faculty, these are typically the stories we tell when we are in community to seek affirmation and support. This project comes in the heals of the powerful DEI webinar series facilitated by the DIMAC, where they used a skit to convey everyday challenges when advancing equity conversations within the admissions process. Additionally, Shani Fleming, MSHS, MPH, PA-C, associate professor and chief equity, diversity, and inclusion officer at the University of Maryland Baltimore PA program, has developed a group called Melanin Magic where faculty of color meet informally to support and listen to each other. URiM faculty find this space affirming and provides support when they are the only person of color in their programs.
We want to create a safe space for members to submit their stories. If you share your contact information, it would be to keep you in the loop of the development of the project and assist the team to learn how you would like to participate. We will NOT publish these stories publicly with identifiable information. We will de-identify your story if we find them to have a connection to you.
- It is a story. Be creative. It is a narrative but not a dialogue, case study, or scenario.
- It is short. 50-200 words.
- It is relevant. It simplifies a real-life situation that is relevant to issues related to URiM faculty in PA programs.
- It allows for multiple solutions or responses. It is intended to encourage independent thinking and unique responses. It includes a prompt with instructions and a set of tasks, i.e., specific issues to be addressed by the program to benefit URiM faculty.
Some potential vignette topics you can provide insight on are:
- Discrimination based on your national origin, race, color, religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation, and familial status.
- Workload equity
- Student evaluations
- Peer Interactions
- Isolation
- Overt/Covert Racism
- Microaggressions
- White Fragility
- Lack of mentorship
- Promotion/Tenure
- White Centric Culture
- “Lip service” (disconnect between statements of support versus action)
- “Pushback” (resistance about race being a barrier)
- Issues incorporating JEDI curriculum
- When your colleagues skirt around topics of race, racism, etc.
- Challenges with white students when you are URiM
- The personal connection to topics of health disparities
- Being the voice for everyone in your demographic group
- Hostile work environments
- Tokenism in the workplace
- Experiences of being an ally when URiM are not present
- Experiences of being an ally to challenge the status quo
- Barriers to retention
- Barriers to recruitment
Submit your story here.
News on Our Members
More Member Stories in the News ▶︎
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PALLA Fellow Designs Longitudinal LGBTQ+ Health Curriculum
My name is Jenna Schiller. I graduated from the Towson/CCBC PA program in 2017. I was accepted as a Physician Assistant Learning and Leadership Academy (PALLA) fellow in September 2020 and recently became a graduate of the fellowship in May 2021. Throughout the fellowship, we were tasked with developing an individual project that was potentially a gap in PA education or an area that we felt could be expanded or improved. When brainstorming what I wanted to do for my final project, I reflected on why I wanted to become a PA. The reason I pursued a career in medicine was to provide compassionate patient care and ensure that patients were treated fairly, justly, and with the care they deserve.
…Stories Filter
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University of Alabama: Increasing Underrepresented Minorities
The University of Alabama at Birmingham Physician Assistant Studies program has been awarded a grant of $1,492,465 from HRSA to expand mental health training for their students, increase the number of underrepresented in medicine, and extend clinical care to more underserved patient populations. In Alabama, 62 of the 67 counties fall under the federal definition of Health Professional Shortage Areas. More than one-third of recent UAB PA graduates serve in…
Priscilla Marsicovetere Promoted to University Dean
Priscilla Marsicovetere, JD, PA-C By: Edward Williams, DMSc, MEd, PA-CIt is my pleasure to announce that Priscilla Marsicovetere, JD, PA-C, current Master of Physician Assistant Studies (MPAS) Program Director and Associate Professor, has been promoted to the position of Dean of the College of Health & Natural Sciences and Professor of Franklin Pierce University beginning August 30, 2021.Dr. Marsicovetere served as the Director of the MPAS program since 2017. Under her leadership, the program experienced…
PALLA: Programmatic Evaluation for the 21st Century
Best Practices and Transformative Insights By: PALLA – PA Leadership and Learning Academy of Maryland PA educators share a common mission with our health professions colleagues — to launch the next generation of competent and compassionate health care providers. Like all explorers, we’re constantly checking our course and adjusting our path to ensure success. But how do we know which adjustments to make? How do we know when we’ve reached our destination? The process of programmatic evaluation and ongoing self-assessment is a continuous cycle of asking relevant questions, uncovering the right data, and using that…
Hofstra University: Students Use Creativity to Educate on Equitable Health for All
During National Public Health Week in April 2021, Hofstra University’s Class of 2022 PA students participated in the 7th Annual Hofstra National Public Health Week Film Competition, which focused on implicit bias and health equality. The students, mentored by Hofstra PA faculty, created videos addressing a range of public health issues such as Black maternal health disparities, the impact of COVID-19 on children living with developmental disabilities, cardiovascular interventions, and more. Two Hofstra PA student teams even took home first and second prize out of 15 competing submissions. Creative storytelling…
Creighton University: Students Give Back to Change the Course of the Pandemic
As nation-wide COVID-19 vaccination efforts have continued gaining speed, many local rollout plans have relied on PA students to play an integral role in vaccinating our communities – ultimately bringing families, neighbors, and friends safely together again. Creighton University has partnered with the Douglas County (NE) Health Department in Omaha, Nebraska, to provide a weekly COVID vaccination clinic for the community, staffed entirely by Creighton faculty, staff, and students. Each Saturday, the clinic administers an impressive 5,000 vaccinations to members of the public in…
East Carolina University: Expecting the Unexpected in PA Education
“If I was giving advice to someone new to clinical education, I would say the more organized you can possibly be, the better – and to be prepared literally for anything to happen next. When you have a plan A, also have a plan B, and consider a plan C so that you’re always prepared.” Kim Stokes, program director and chair at Elon University School of Health Sciences* In 2020, PA students across the country were abruptly displaced from clinical sites due to…