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Physician Assistant Department
Current Highlights
We are proud to announce that in December 2007, the PA Department graduated its first physician assistant students with the BS/MS dual degree! This memorable event was commemorated with a departmental Convocation Ceremony for the 19 graduates. The ceremony was hosted by Mr. John Bray, Director of Public Relations, and the guest speaker was the department’s long-time Medical Director, Dr. Ronald Santasiero. The PA Department is proud to report that 17 of these students graduated with Latin Honors and all 19 graduates have started working on their professional careers.
We are also proud of the success of three of our current BS/MS graduate students – Robert Ketchum, Amy Kotarski and Brad Krencik – who came in 5th place out of 48 teams at the recent AAPA Conference Challenge Bowl in San Antonio, TX. Our team was a breath away from making it to the final round!
Departmental Information and History
The D’Youville College PA Department is accredited by ARC-PA (www.arc-pa.org) and was the first program of its kind in western New York. Since 1995, the program has graduated over 400 physician assistants who work across the nation in a broad spectrum of medical disciplines.
Commitment to Academic and Personal Success
As a department that has a small, close knit faculty and administrative staff, we are committed to helping each and every student that we accept cross the stage with a BS/MS degree in PA! We accept only as many students as we plan to graduate and do not require our students to reapply to the department prior to beginning the didactic, clinical or graduate phase of the curriculum – once you are in, you stay in, as long as you continue to meet the academic requirements for the department. This commitment to the academic success of our students has given the PA Department the distinguished position of having the lowest attrition rate of any department on the D’Youville Campus.
Andrew Case, PA Faculty Member with his band, The Outer Circle Orchestra, performing at the PA Student Fundraiser – Dance for Health. Spring 2008
Furthermore, our students have the highest professional certifying examination pass rate on campus. The vast majority of our students consistently meet or exceed the national PANCE pass rate average, year after year.
Also, at least 95% of our graduates find permanent job placements within six months of graduation, in the medical fields of their choice.
Physician Assistant Program Mission Statement
The mission of the D’Youville College Physician Assistant Program is to prepare high quality clinicians with the highest ethical standards, who will be leaders in the PA profession. Our graduates will be trained to serve a variety of patient populations with sensitivity and compassion, with an emphasis on the needs of the medically underserved. We are dedicated to fostering the skills necessary to generate new clinical insights based on medically relevant research. The D’Youville College Physician Assistant graduate will be a community educator of preventive medicine based on a personal philosophy of life long learning.
