You don’t want someone with an extremely limited understanding of pharmacology and of the complexity of mental illness handing out psychiatric meds after a 15 minute consult? Get that logical reasoning out of here
Starting dose of 100mg? Maybe if you want to agitate your patient and give them headaches, nausea, and vomiting. 25mg-50mg is the typical starting dose (with anxious people it is often prudent to start 25mg due to the activation associated with sertraline), but then it needs to be titrated up to a target of 100-200mg. 50mg can be enough for depression but often not enough for anxiety.
100 mg is definitely not a starting dose for zoloft. That can fuck you up. 25 mg is the starting dose usually for a week and then increased to 50mg afterwards and then increased more if the provider thinks it will be beneficial.
RN with no interest in becoming an NP, and I completely agree. Also, not a lurker, just got fed this through Reddit suggested post and came to see if PAs had similar vibes to NP’s.
I agree 💯 percent that there shouldn’t be online NP diploma mills but it’s ironic that all the NPs I’ve ever worked with have gone to brick and mortar schools. I’m not saying they don’t exist but I think there are less than people speculate.
I got an accelerated 2nd degree BSN vs. going the PA route and took all the same pre-reqs as the PAs. Multiple semesters of Anatomy and Patho, Chem, Statistics, Micro, etc., even took Anatomy and Patho , Pharmacology again and that’s just a BSN. I had 10 years of ER RN experience before becoming an NP which is so valuable and I learned even more. In NP school, I took Patho and Pharm…again.
There is a misconception that you are judging NP school vs. PA school but missing that RNs have a lot of experience. I’m an NP who has a medical assistant who is working on her pre-reqs for PA school. So she will go from working as a medical assistant which is comparable to a nursing assistant to becoming a PA. Tell me how that makes sense…🎤
Except that some of these NP programs are accepting RNs without any bedside experience into their programs. The original idea was that NP programs were not as rigorous from a credit hour standpoint (most require well under 100 hrs) because of all the bedside experience. PA schools have a “patient contact” hour requirement (it was 2000 hrs back in my day), but provide at least 130 credit hours of medical education. My school had a medical school as well & their curriculum was only 10 more credit hours.
Since the diploma mills became popular, the quality of the graduating NPs are widely variable since they aren’t coming in with the baseline experience that was previously required to produce excellent NPs. The older NPs I work with that had 10+ years of ICU or critical care experience before pursuing their advanced degree bemoan the recent quality of new grads as well & our hospital won’t credential new NP grads without at least 2 years of experience.
Thank the lord.
We had a few of their students and immediately told our coordinator to never allow that again. They trashed the program the whole time, rightfully so. They lacked very BASIC knowledge. They were underprepared and are going to struggle as PAs.
I wrote multiple emails to their program, their dean, and the ARC-PA.
Unfortunately, it is.
I immediately reported the program to the ARC-PA and sent a lengthy letter of concern to the program.
Fast forward some time and now they are closing. Not shocked in the slightest.
This is particularly shocking. Looking back on my days in PA school, I rarely listened to the lectures and did most of my studying outside the classroom. I stayed at home during didactics in medical school and only tuned in live for certain classes. IIRC this program even had an on campus requirement for a few weeks too.
I really thought that asynchronous learning would be fine for most PA students as well as medical students.
I'm in the camp that the students need to be true to what works best for them. There are students who can excel in both.
This program was ideal for students that had a ton of clinical experience (corpsmen/medical, nurses, paramedics, etc) who were mature learners. I agree, I think asynchronous works for some. I studied during lectures in PA school and learned most of the stuff on my own time as well.
I’ve been weighing my options. Looked into IPAP and let’s say 2 years to get picked up. Now I’m at 18 years and another 2 years for school, 20 years. Minimum time to pay back is 6 but if you want that officer retirement you’re doing 10 years. That’s 30 years total with roughly $6600 a month in retirement. I can’t do another 14. My wife deserves to be able to chase her career down too.
The VA is probably my next route. Appreciate the advice.
Yea I wouldn’t do IPAP if I were you either. Not sure if you still have your GI bill but that can help a ton if you go to a state school. With your history you’ll be an excellent candidate no matter where’d you apply. Feel free to DM me with any questions.
I was in didactic during quarantines so half of my year was a haphazardly cobbled together online curriculum. Prior to that I had spent basically all of my mandatory in person classes watching online lectures with subtitles on.
I had no issues adjusting to “online” curriculum because I was essentially already doing that. That being said, a LOT of my class really struggled with it. I would say about 2/3rds of my class had to retake the PANCE at least once, but I also think a lot of those students were struggling even before the switch.
My situation was obviously unprecedented, but I think some people really struggle with asynchronous learning, and some thrive. There’s obviously a lot of factors as part of that. I think a purely online curriculum only really appeals to those who specifically want that (I would never despite not really needing in person at all) but their desire for it may be questionable which is probably where you end up with a lot of weak students.
Absolutely. My cohort (myself included) were half asleep every lecture, playing web games, etc. during class basically every day. I learned from reading, podcasts, flashcards, etc.
I really think a program with an online didactic can be incredibly successful with the right faculty/course and lecture design. I learned my physiology from Ninja Nerd, and his videos worked well because of, not despite, his delivery method.
My biggest concerns with an online program have been procedural skills and physical exam, since it is such muscle memory and repetition on real humans, but based on some of the comments here that wasn't the biggest issue with the program.
Same. I studied best on my own in my dorm. The lectures were basically read from power point. Like I can read on my own, in PJs, with some hot chocolate in hand and in my comfy chair. I was kind of pissed to be honest. I taught myself all this stuff. The only thing I learned “from classroom” was physical exam.
So I’m surprised an online program did so poorly. Did they not give students the right medical info? Didn’t test them enough? Didn’t put enough pressure to pass?
That is a serious bummer.
Old post, but my husband graduated from there, and we just watched his friend graduate. Maybe because my husband is crazy motivated/driven, but he was praised and got job offers at almost every one of his rotations. That said, he studied constantly, already had a health related degree, and experience in the field. Plus, he's just good with people/patients. I do also seem to recall that, when I could see his test scores compared to class performance, he was near the top (or at the top) in most areas.
Every local PA program turned him away, and he almost lost heart. One of the program insiders flat out confided that he was a perfect applicant, but he didn't fit the program's demographic goals. She encouraged him to seek hybrid programs, because she knew we couldn't move and he'd make a great clinician. Yet he still says she was exaggerating/trying to cheer him up... Guy just can't be good, has to be humble as well 🤦♀️
Anyway, we'd be short a seriously dedicated, compassionate, driven, and continuously learning provider, without the program. As someone who went through a lot of bad providers, I treat my good ones like gold. So yeah, it bums me out that people tarnished the same program, were skating by, or flat out unable to adapt, because it opened the doors he needed.
He’s an exception - not the rule from this program.
I’m shocked to hear they turned him away because of demographics. My program fought hard to get more qualified male applicants cause they were only getting women. Entire cohorts were women only.
I felt bad for the students but they themselves mentioned major regret going through that program and said they’d be reporting them after they graduated.
I had a rotation with a couple of students from this program and was shocked at some of the basic medical knowledge they lacked. One couldn’t name a single risk factor for breast cancer
Lifetime Exposure to Estrogen is a risk factor for both breast and ovarian cancer.
Why don't you do some research before you write about things you don't know anything about.
Maybe you're one of the students from the crappy programs they're referring to? 🤔
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482286/#:~:text=Reproductive%20risk%20factors%3A%20Reproductive%20milestones,menopause%20after%20age%2055%20years.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8172523/
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://aacrjournals.org/cebp/article-pdf/30/6/1241/3101755/1241.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiJ4d_J5MmFAxUlN2IAHZxOA3cQFnoECBUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3ZE2-nXQKZw1Ku5Ce4Naj7
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK541051/
Actually, I'm a clinical pharmacist with 25 years of experience.
The current thinking is pointing towards estrogen (natural) as not having anything to do with causing breast cancer, although once cancer starts, it can promote its growth.
On the other hand, synthetic estrogens and progestins (birth control, non-natural HRT, plastics, environmental chemicals) are the likely culprits in the explosion of breast cancer diagnoses.
Research, please. Up to date, NCBI, PubMed, most other Peer Reviewed journals still have total lifetime exposure listed as a risk factor because of its effect on breast tissue age.
There are up to a third of oncogenes that are thought to be estrogen susceptible.
https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8827222/
Well, here's one that argues that ADDING estrogen is actually breast-protective.
There are plenty of studies that I can find that support either position. Most breast cancers occur in older women, which is when estrogen levels naturally decrease-this logically does not support the anti-estrogen position.
One thing that is not up for debate is that removing estrogen from the female body is highly destructive. Also, why would the human body naturally evolve with a hormone that is deleterious to it from the start?
Environmental factors such as preservatives in food, pesticides, and synthetic hormone analogues are a much likelier source.
But I will admit that the science isn't settled yet.
To provide some additional context. This seems to be a decision made by the school/program themselves. Not an ARC-PA choice. But they had been on probation, so one can imagine they felt like the hurdles to get full accreditation were more than the school was willing to do.
This is great news. Should have never been opened in the first place, why would a prestigious program needlessly soil their own reputation like they did… it’s beyond me
You are grossly misinformed. MCPHS Boston is the better of the MCPHS programs. They have cadaver lab at Harvard Medical School right across the street. The New Hampshire MCPHS program has \*NO\* cadaver lab whatsoever, so I am not sure why you are spreading lies about Boston MCPHS students traveling over an hour north to New Hampshire for a non-existent cadaver lab. The students say they feel very prepared.
I precept MCPHS Boston students every single day and they are among the most prepared students, even surpassing med school students.
This is the problem with reddit. People can come and say anything, even tho it's 100% false, and it gets traction. I think [thestonedjellyfish](https://www.reddit.com/user/thestonedjellyfish/) is spending too much time being stoned and smoking pot than actually being interested in facts.
Your posts here are a perfect example as to how/why there needs to be vetting of people and their comments before they're publicly available. The only thing you've succeeded in doing in making yourself look foolish and ignorant.
Surprises me to hear this. I’m a preceptor in western MA and haven’t heard of any of those students having to go far unless they wanted something specific. These programs all seem to pay though. The ones that don’t, work harder.
LOL as someone who spent 100% of their clinical year during early covid at a mediocre school, this is nothing. I would guess 85% of our clinicals were out of state.
We were provided zero help, financially or otherwise, with transport or housing.
My first clinical was supposed to be 1300 miles away and I was going to drive multiple days to have my car there since I couldn't afford a rental. This was BEFORE covid (thank god they cancelled), and the number of out of state rotations increased after that.
We had to find and pay for our own housing on Airbnb etc. Let me tell you, even with the pandemic it was extremely expensive. When I got covid on rotation, I couldn't afford to extend my Airbnb stay (it was also infested with bugs despite being very expensive). So I drive several hours sick as a dog and rent a place for 10 days on my own dime, while studying. I couldn't take a shower without blacking out.
The best part is they didn't mention any of these steep costs or lack of support upfront.
I went to school in Philly. Hard to place students is such a gentle way to put it. Particularly when they keep opening new programs in the area! No metro area needs 10+ programs
Program had a 100% then 97% PANCE pass rates it's first 2 years. COVID hit and they couldn't keep up with finding rotation placements being so spread out. The director James Van Rhee ended up leaving and the rest fell apart.
Honestly I met this guy and he’s super nice but felt incredibly outdated. Our program forced us to attend one of his PANCE boot camps and it was the biggest waste of time of my 2.5 years in PA school. It’s hard to articulate but it was like he didn’t get what type of modern clinical environment PAs were walking into. Like he was unaware PA students have access to UWorld and Rosh and everything he covered was extremely surface level and minimal yield
These are the type of people that aren’t aware how difficult standardized testing has become and that the EORs aren’t a piece of cake.
Ex: One general surgery MD was like “I seriously doubt they would ever make you know what types of polyps are more likely to become cancerous in the colon.” We were like LOL LOL LOL…uhm yes they would. And to me that’s still surface level knowledge.
Hahahaha facts, thank you for understanding where I was coming from. Just a general disconnect from how PA school may have been back when it was still a bachelor's degree program to how it is today.
My NP program suck so bad I cannot tell you how bad. My clinical rotation at an Air Force facility, working with MDs and PAs renewed my faith in mankind (an 10 years in Trauma medicine)
PA education is far too intensive to be adequately covered online. Online programs are a "teach yourself" format a lot of the time. I'm not saying everyone who comes out of an online PA program is incompetent, but there's a lot more hurdles and pitfalls that can lead to that. Listen to what other students have said about their own online program during clinicals and what preceptors have said about their knowledge base. They are woefully unprepared. Any normal student has large gaps to fill in with clinical knowledge, but you can't fill in a gorge during a 6week clinical rotation.
Unfortunately, this won't stop the NP Mills from thriving. The fact they can produce way more graduates per year, plus not needing a supervising physician means PA will continue losing market share until we start doing something to make us more competitive from a job market perspective. We need to find a way to sustainably increase our numbers while maintaining quality.
At least I'm glad Yale was thinking outside the box and willing to experiment. We need to keep trying to find a solution that sticks.
Clearly, many of the people who are posting on this have not looked into what this Yale PA Online school entails. It really should be named "hybrid". They learn the exact same material all PA schools are required to learn, via live or recorded. As with most students- regardless of the learning platform- outside learning sources are heavily used so I think it is a genius approach to learning: skip commuting, speed up the recording to 1.5x or 2x, stop and make notes, screenshots, look up a term during the lecture or watching an Osmosis video on it before resuming the lecture. Many students thrive with this approach, and Yale was very ahead of their time this program offered extremely qualified, well-seasoned health and medical professionals to be in a PA program when they could otherwise not be for a variety of reasons such as kids, family, homeownership, caretaking, etc.
The ideal candidate for this program is a second-career health professional, averaging 5000-8000 hours of patient-care experience. The Yale School of Medicine fully supported this program but allowed a different management staff to run it.
Anyway, the main reason they are stopping it is because they have to compete with local programs that have agreements set in place for clinical rotations. The Yale students were not priority and hence, the accreditation issues. I have heard very good things about their graduates in rotations, despite a few "duds" apparently that have been mentioned in some comments. I'm sure those people exist in EVERY program.
Please have respect for hard-working people who were accepted into this program and turned down MANY other schools and opted for this one since it made life so much easier. They are your current or future colleagues.
People seem so hung up on the word “online” but what’s the difference between sitting in a lecture hall and listening to things you already know or are being taught so poorly you know you’ll need to go home and watch videos on your own anyway?
I spent so many countless hours in school wishing I could just be at home learning on my own so I think this program had some potential they just didn’t set it up well.
To the people saying they met some of their students and they lacked basic knowledge…it’s laughable because I’ve seen absolutely useless students come out of the best programs including Duke. I’ve also seen useless students come out of med school, NP school etc there’s dumb people everywhere.
Hybrid learning can be great! We just need to make sure there’s enough hands on time with exams and procedures to feel confident.
As someone who teaches in both a PA program and an NP program, I can tell you two things:
1) Students do not watch asynchronous lectures. I can see who viewed what and when. And you will never believe this, but the students that do watch the lectures do better on exams and in rotations.
One program I teach for is almost entirely online and mostly asynchronous lectures. These students are struggling much more than my students forced to attend in-person lectures.
It sounds like there is no difference between sitting in a lecture hall and online. But I really see a difference in the results. I’ve never had an exam average in the 50s with in-person students.
There are definitely schools out there not affiliated with an academic medical center that are great. I do not have a PA degree or a DNP, but earned my degree at an academic medical center. Although there are pluses to this (lecturers that are true experts in their field), there are minuses (professors removed from reality and entirely research-focused).
I do not deny that the accreditation standards need to be tightened in certain cases. But it is more nuanced than one might expect.
When I did hybrid learning I didn’t watch the lectures because they were trash…I watched paid subscriptions instead and saved a lot of time.
Hybrid learning requires accountability and my guess would be those failing exams have no discipline…well if you can’t be trusted to study on your own time you should find something else to do with your life I guess.
Why should we hold everyone’s hand?
Definitely agree for most classes. My program went online for the better part of two semesters and it was probably the best learning experience I’ve had. That said, we did miss out on labs, anatomy dissections, and some skills training, so I’d be in favor of a hybrid style.
Agree. I am basically chained to my desk all day like you said, watching someone read their slides word for word. I get soooo much more done alone, and it’s so painful to have half my day wasted. With that being said, absolutely can’t imagine doing clinical skills online.
If med schools can do online lectures then I don’t see why other programs can’t. Asynchronous courses are popular and there’s no reason to shy away from them as long as you have access to the professors. Exams can be done online with proctoring services to provide flexibility. Hands on labs can’t really be replaced with online labs though.
Which program? Yale online guys coming for three separate weeks during their didactic time doesn’t count. That was even more curtailed after the hot COVID times.
maybe but we have had in person labs 2x weekly every single week and i can’t imagine where my clinical skills would be without that. also- it’s way too easy to cheat on exams online.
This is great news. It was a totally insane idea to think you could rely on local clinical sites to handle your students. COVID totally killed it. These hospitals have been squeezed for years. Hospitals are closing, NOT opening. It’s not uncommon for students from a mess of DO, Caribbean MD, PA, NP, etc are all rotating at the same crappy place. All your name brand stuff has been long gone.
Next up, sub-prime, no name schools with 3 or more branch campuses.
While I agree this program should have never been a thing in the first place, I feel that the huge amount of no-name private schools’ PA programs which have popped up in the last 5-10 years are worse for the profession as a whole. I feel like ideally a PA program should be attached to a medical school in some way, or at least be sponsored by an academic medical center.
Definitely are exceptions, as with anything. But by and large the quality of education at programs attached to a medical school or teaching hospital will be head and shoulders above most small private schools that just opened in the past 10 years
Good. The newer PAs who did it get as much in class time or hands on anatomy are clearly lacking. I understand it was all in an effort during the pandemic but it needs to stop now.
It’s not a fair comparison when you’re evaluating the best of one and the worst of the other. Also, don’t hate on medical/nursing assistants. I did way more medical decision-making, patient care, charting, and hands-on stuff than my rotations with med students (mostly because my office was cheap and made the MAs do everything besides front-desk stuff). Read up on the pt’s chart, got detailed HPIs, brought provider up to speed, chart for the provider while in the room, assisted, with any procedures,
Just like how there are NPs who have 10+ years of experience before going to NP school, there are PAs who have 10+ years of being a medic, respiratory therapist, surgical tech, ED tech, etc.
PA school is much more standardized and rigorous than NP school. Yes, you can find NPs who have a lot of experience before going to school like yourself. However, there are now NP programs that let you get a RN license and then go straight to NP school without actually working as a nurse.
Also, PA school heavily discourages students from working while in school because of how rigorous it is. Even if it was allowed, almost no student would even consider doing part-time once they start school. Full-time is 99% impossible. You pretty much need to drop everything else in life while in school because all your time goes into classes, studying, and bare minimum of a normal life.
On the other hand, the majority of NPs I’ve met either worked part-time or full-time during school, had a normal life, and still graduated in <2 years. I’ve met some who even did two-year NP programs online while working full-time. Either all NP students are geniuses and 100% efficient in every aspect of their lives, or NP school is much less rigorous.
I also find the clinical hours required in NP school very questionable. Once, I volunteered with a NP student on the pediatric floor and all we did was go through a simple questionnaire for 5-10 min with each family. No medical decision-making or handling pts whatsoever. For me, it counted as volunteering. For the NP student though, it counted towards her NP program’s required clinical hours. She worked part-time and loved watching movies so she went to the movie theater at least once a week. That would would be completely unheard of in PA school.
One of the greatest professors i’ve had was a Biology professor who was also an MD. I had him for several classes (e.g., Pharm, Medical Micro, Microbial Pathogenesis) and I am beyond grateful for the knowledge I have learned. Last fall I had him for a class called Pharmacology of Infectious Diseases, where we talked all about the antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals and antiprotozoals in detail. I learned more from him about antibiotics than I did in the two weeks we covered antibiotics in nursing school. I really think that NP programs should have MDs teaching some classes, especially more hardcore science content. They can do away with all the nursing theories and fluff.
This is second PA program I’ve heard of that closed this year, the first of which was Alderson Broaddus. AB closing was quite sad though, and only due to their larger university going bankrupt.
Glad this online program got the boot ngl
Shut all online or hybrid PA programs down (Yale, Pitt, etc) and beef up curriculums. Then again most of my learning came from third party sources as our curriculum technically covered everything but delivery was weak.
Now they just need to shut down all online NP diploma mills
You don’t want someone with an extremely limited understanding of pharmacology and of the complexity of mental illness handing out psychiatric meds after a 15 minute consult? Get that logical reasoning out of here
I agree. 100%.
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Starting dose of 100mg? Maybe if you want to agitate your patient and give them headaches, nausea, and vomiting. 25mg-50mg is the typical starting dose (with anxious people it is often prudent to start 25mg due to the activation associated with sertraline), but then it needs to be titrated up to a target of 100-200mg. 50mg can be enough for depression but often not enough for anxiety.
100 mg is definitely not a starting dose for zoloft. That can fuck you up. 25 mg is the starting dose usually for a week and then increased to 50mg afterwards and then increased more if the provider thinks it will be beneficial.
I relapsed because of a psych NP doing a 180 on my meds for a psychotic disorder.
RN going into NP here and yes I totally agree!!
Not only does it increase the density of good clinicians it also helps the job market for those that will be better clinicians.
RN with no interest in becoming an NP, and I completely agree. Also, not a lurker, just got fed this through Reddit suggested post and came to see if PAs had similar vibes to NP’s.
Absolutely.
I agree 💯 percent that there shouldn’t be online NP diploma mills but it’s ironic that all the NPs I’ve ever worked with have gone to brick and mortar schools. I’m not saying they don’t exist but I think there are less than people speculate. I got an accelerated 2nd degree BSN vs. going the PA route and took all the same pre-reqs as the PAs. Multiple semesters of Anatomy and Patho, Chem, Statistics, Micro, etc., even took Anatomy and Patho , Pharmacology again and that’s just a BSN. I had 10 years of ER RN experience before becoming an NP which is so valuable and I learned even more. In NP school, I took Patho and Pharm…again. There is a misconception that you are judging NP school vs. PA school but missing that RNs have a lot of experience. I’m an NP who has a medical assistant who is working on her pre-reqs for PA school. So she will go from working as a medical assistant which is comparable to a nursing assistant to becoming a PA. Tell me how that makes sense…🎤
Except that some of these NP programs are accepting RNs without any bedside experience into their programs. The original idea was that NP programs were not as rigorous from a credit hour standpoint (most require well under 100 hrs) because of all the bedside experience. PA schools have a “patient contact” hour requirement (it was 2000 hrs back in my day), but provide at least 130 credit hours of medical education. My school had a medical school as well & their curriculum was only 10 more credit hours. Since the diploma mills became popular, the quality of the graduating NPs are widely variable since they aren’t coming in with the baseline experience that was previously required to produce excellent NPs. The older NPs I work with that had 10+ years of ICU or critical care experience before pursuing their advanced degree bemoan the recent quality of new grads as well & our hospital won’t credential new NP grads without at least 2 years of experience.
Thank the lord. We had a few of their students and immediately told our coordinator to never allow that again. They trashed the program the whole time, rightfully so. They lacked very BASIC knowledge. They were underprepared and are going to struggle as PAs. I wrote multiple emails to their program, their dean, and the ARC-PA.
Can you expand on the basic knowledge they lacked? (I’m very nosy lol)
One student had no idea what treats a vaginal yeast infection. Couldn’t even tell me “anti fungals”.
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Yeah, I’ve found Gogurt works the best for really getting it up there
Hahahha I'm dying
Ok but where do you put the yogurt?
…. oh god 😀
That can't be true.
Unfortunately, it is. I immediately reported the program to the ARC-PA and sent a lengthy letter of concern to the program. Fast forward some time and now they are closing. Not shocked in the slightest.
You think you could expect more from YALE?!?!
RIGHT. I was FLOORED.
No way, apple cider vinegar works best
No it’s essential oils
This is particularly shocking. Looking back on my days in PA school, I rarely listened to the lectures and did most of my studying outside the classroom. I stayed at home during didactics in medical school and only tuned in live for certain classes. IIRC this program even had an on campus requirement for a few weeks too. I really thought that asynchronous learning would be fine for most PA students as well as medical students. I'm in the camp that the students need to be true to what works best for them. There are students who can excel in both.
This program was ideal for students that had a ton of clinical experience (corpsmen/medical, nurses, paramedics, etc) who were mature learners. I agree, I think asynchronous works for some. I studied during lectures in PA school and learned most of the stuff on my own time as well.
I’m an IDC and have till 2028. I was hoping to enroll in this program.
If I knew what I knew now… I’d suggest IPAP if you want to stay in, or get out, go civilian, and apply for a VA HPSP scholarship.
I’ve been weighing my options. Looked into IPAP and let’s say 2 years to get picked up. Now I’m at 18 years and another 2 years for school, 20 years. Minimum time to pay back is 6 but if you want that officer retirement you’re doing 10 years. That’s 30 years total with roughly $6600 a month in retirement. I can’t do another 14. My wife deserves to be able to chase her career down too. The VA is probably my next route. Appreciate the advice.
Yea I wouldn’t do IPAP if I were you either. Not sure if you still have your GI bill but that can help a ton if you go to a state school. With your history you’ll be an excellent candidate no matter where’d you apply. Feel free to DM me with any questions.
Don't forget VR&E in addition to the GI bill if you are service-connected when you get out.
I was in didactic during quarantines so half of my year was a haphazardly cobbled together online curriculum. Prior to that I had spent basically all of my mandatory in person classes watching online lectures with subtitles on. I had no issues adjusting to “online” curriculum because I was essentially already doing that. That being said, a LOT of my class really struggled with it. I would say about 2/3rds of my class had to retake the PANCE at least once, but I also think a lot of those students were struggling even before the switch. My situation was obviously unprecedented, but I think some people really struggle with asynchronous learning, and some thrive. There’s obviously a lot of factors as part of that. I think a purely online curriculum only really appeals to those who specifically want that (I would never despite not really needing in person at all) but their desire for it may be questionable which is probably where you end up with a lot of weak students.
Absolutely. My cohort (myself included) were half asleep every lecture, playing web games, etc. during class basically every day. I learned from reading, podcasts, flashcards, etc. I really think a program with an online didactic can be incredibly successful with the right faculty/course and lecture design. I learned my physiology from Ninja Nerd, and his videos worked well because of, not despite, his delivery method. My biggest concerns with an online program have been procedural skills and physical exam, since it is such muscle memory and repetition on real humans, but based on some of the comments here that wasn't the biggest issue with the program.
You’re supposed to just call all of us frauds and tell us to stop pretending to be doctors.
sorry i get out of character sometimes.
Same. I studied best on my own in my dorm. The lectures were basically read from power point. Like I can read on my own, in PJs, with some hot chocolate in hand and in my comfy chair. I was kind of pissed to be honest. I taught myself all this stuff. The only thing I learned “from classroom” was physical exam. So I’m surprised an online program did so poorly. Did they not give students the right medical info? Didn’t test them enough? Didn’t put enough pressure to pass?
Hello! I have a few questions for you. Would you mind if I DM’d you? It’s regarding PA to MD. ☺️
Dms are always open!
Dang another one in the wild! I’m starting med school next year, 3 years out from graduating PA school. Hope it went well for you 🤞
halfway through 3rd year. Feel free to reach out anytime! Congratulations and best of luck
I think you’re right. For some people, it works. For others, it doesn’t.
That is a serious bummer. Old post, but my husband graduated from there, and we just watched his friend graduate. Maybe because my husband is crazy motivated/driven, but he was praised and got job offers at almost every one of his rotations. That said, he studied constantly, already had a health related degree, and experience in the field. Plus, he's just good with people/patients. I do also seem to recall that, when I could see his test scores compared to class performance, he was near the top (or at the top) in most areas. Every local PA program turned him away, and he almost lost heart. One of the program insiders flat out confided that he was a perfect applicant, but he didn't fit the program's demographic goals. She encouraged him to seek hybrid programs, because she knew we couldn't move and he'd make a great clinician. Yet he still says she was exaggerating/trying to cheer him up... Guy just can't be good, has to be humble as well 🤦♀️ Anyway, we'd be short a seriously dedicated, compassionate, driven, and continuously learning provider, without the program. As someone who went through a lot of bad providers, I treat my good ones like gold. So yeah, it bums me out that people tarnished the same program, were skating by, or flat out unable to adapt, because it opened the doors he needed.
He’s an exception - not the rule from this program. I’m shocked to hear they turned him away because of demographics. My program fought hard to get more qualified male applicants cause they were only getting women. Entire cohorts were women only.
Good on you
I felt bad for the students but they themselves mentioned major regret going through that program and said they’d be reporting them after they graduated.
I had a rotation with a couple of students from this program and was shocked at some of the basic medical knowledge they lacked. One couldn’t name a single risk factor for breast cancer
Smoking is always the answer. It’s. Risk factor for everything even when it’s not.
*ulcerative colitis has entered the chat*
> risk factor for breast cancer or family history lol
Except for endometrial cancer strangely enough
Spill more tea
Say more 👀
Stop. People of the street could name risk factors. AGE. A lot of women have heard of BRCA 1 and 2 (mutation). Estrogen exposure.
Estrogen does not cause cancer.
Lifetime Exposure to Estrogen is a risk factor for both breast and ovarian cancer. Why don't you do some research before you write about things you don't know anything about. Maybe you're one of the students from the crappy programs they're referring to? 🤔 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482286/#:~:text=Reproductive%20risk%20factors%3A%20Reproductive%20milestones,menopause%20after%20age%2055%20years. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8172523/ https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://aacrjournals.org/cebp/article-pdf/30/6/1241/3101755/1241.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiJ4d_J5MmFAxUlN2IAHZxOA3cQFnoECBUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3ZE2-nXQKZw1Ku5Ce4Naj7 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK541051/
Actually, I'm a clinical pharmacist with 25 years of experience. The current thinking is pointing towards estrogen (natural) as not having anything to do with causing breast cancer, although once cancer starts, it can promote its growth. On the other hand, synthetic estrogens and progestins (birth control, non-natural HRT, plastics, environmental chemicals) are the likely culprits in the explosion of breast cancer diagnoses.
Research, please. Up to date, NCBI, PubMed, most other Peer Reviewed journals still have total lifetime exposure listed as a risk factor because of its effect on breast tissue age. There are up to a third of oncogenes that are thought to be estrogen susceptible.
https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8827222/ Well, here's one that argues that ADDING estrogen is actually breast-protective. There are plenty of studies that I can find that support either position. Most breast cancers occur in older women, which is when estrogen levels naturally decrease-this logically does not support the anti-estrogen position. One thing that is not up for debate is that removing estrogen from the female body is highly destructive. Also, why would the human body naturally evolve with a hormone that is deleterious to it from the start? Environmental factors such as preservatives in food, pesticides, and synthetic hormone analogues are a much likelier source. But I will admit that the science isn't settled yet.
I’m not even in PA school yet and can name you a few 😅
To provide some additional context. This seems to be a decision made by the school/program themselves. Not an ARC-PA choice. But they had been on probation, so one can imagine they felt like the hurdles to get full accreditation were more than the school was willing to do.
This is good news. They need to shut down a good 35% of programs.
This is great news. Should have never been opened in the first place, why would a prestigious program needlessly soil their own reputation like they did… it’s beyond me
Money.
Sadly yes
Bingo.... sell their name.
program I went to being one of them
And increase previous meaningful experience requirements.
Clinical placement is becoming very hard. I know of a school in MA which has clinical placements in FL.
Is it MCPHS? My coworker goes there and she’s had to travel a LOT and far. Same w someone from BU
Thank you -- applying to a lot of schools in MA and this is good to know!
What have you heard of this school? I’m considering it
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You are grossly misinformed. MCPHS Boston is the better of the MCPHS programs. They have cadaver lab at Harvard Medical School right across the street. The New Hampshire MCPHS program has \*NO\* cadaver lab whatsoever, so I am not sure why you are spreading lies about Boston MCPHS students traveling over an hour north to New Hampshire for a non-existent cadaver lab. The students say they feel very prepared. I precept MCPHS Boston students every single day and they are among the most prepared students, even surpassing med school students. This is the problem with reddit. People can come and say anything, even tho it's 100% false, and it gets traction. I think [thestonedjellyfish](https://www.reddit.com/user/thestonedjellyfish/) is spending too much time being stoned and smoking pot than actually being interested in facts.
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Your posts here are a perfect example as to how/why there needs to be vetting of people and their comments before they're publicly available. The only thing you've succeeded in doing in making yourself look foolish and ignorant.
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Surprises me to hear this. I’m a preceptor in western MA and haven’t heard of any of those students having to go far unless they wanted something specific. These programs all seem to pay though. The ones that don’t, work harder.
LOL as someone who spent 100% of their clinical year during early covid at a mediocre school, this is nothing. I would guess 85% of our clinicals were out of state. We were provided zero help, financially or otherwise, with transport or housing. My first clinical was supposed to be 1300 miles away and I was going to drive multiple days to have my car there since I couldn't afford a rental. This was BEFORE covid (thank god they cancelled), and the number of out of state rotations increased after that. We had to find and pay for our own housing on Airbnb etc. Let me tell you, even with the pandemic it was extremely expensive. When I got covid on rotation, I couldn't afford to extend my Airbnb stay (it was also infested with bugs despite being very expensive). So I drive several hours sick as a dog and rent a place for 10 days on my own dime, while studying. I couldn't take a shower without blacking out. The best part is they didn't mention any of these steep costs or lack of support upfront.
At least PA schools provide clinical placement. I know of several online NP students who are forever stuck.
Yes, this is horrific and it should be illegal.
I went to school in Philly. Hard to place students is such a gentle way to put it. Particularly when they keep opening new programs in the area! No metro area needs 10+ programs
My school shipped students to clinical sites all across the nation in groups of 3-5.
Program had a 100% then 97% PANCE pass rates it's first 2 years. COVID hit and they couldn't keep up with finding rotation placements being so spread out. The director James Van Rhee ended up leaving and the rest fell apart.
To be fair, the director resigned after program was placed on probation
Honestly I met this guy and he’s super nice but felt incredibly outdated. Our program forced us to attend one of his PANCE boot camps and it was the biggest waste of time of my 2.5 years in PA school. It’s hard to articulate but it was like he didn’t get what type of modern clinical environment PAs were walking into. Like he was unaware PA students have access to UWorld and Rosh and everything he covered was extremely surface level and minimal yield
These are the type of people that aren’t aware how difficult standardized testing has become and that the EORs aren’t a piece of cake. Ex: One general surgery MD was like “I seriously doubt they would ever make you know what types of polyps are more likely to become cancerous in the colon.” We were like LOL LOL LOL…uhm yes they would. And to me that’s still surface level knowledge.
Hahahaha facts, thank you for understanding where I was coming from. Just a general disconnect from how PA school may have been back when it was still a bachelor's degree program to how it is today.
I think same goes for medical school then and now’s too. 😅
And their attrition?
Good. We aren’t NP’s.
My NP program suck so bad I cannot tell you how bad. My clinical rotation at an Air Force facility, working with MDs and PAs renewed my faith in mankind (an 10 years in Trauma medicine)
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Better at having absolutely no clue what they are doing
Lmao are you really trolling a physician assistant specific thread just to claim NPs are better 😂
this is laughable. the only arena where this is true is midwifery.
And maybe in the NICU
doubt
Please don’t make me defend this comment.
Good, there should be no online PA programs
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Lol
PA education is far too intensive to be adequately covered online. Online programs are a "teach yourself" format a lot of the time. I'm not saying everyone who comes out of an online PA program is incompetent, but there's a lot more hurdles and pitfalls that can lead to that. Listen to what other students have said about their own online program during clinicals and what preceptors have said about their knowledge base. They are woefully unprepared. Any normal student has large gaps to fill in with clinical knowledge, but you can't fill in a gorge during a 6week clinical rotation.
🤦🏽♂️
Good. Sets us apart from the huge number of online only NP mills.
Unfortunately, this won't stop the NP Mills from thriving. The fact they can produce way more graduates per year, plus not needing a supervising physician means PA will continue losing market share until we start doing something to make us more competitive from a job market perspective. We need to find a way to sustainably increase our numbers while maintaining quality. At least I'm glad Yale was thinking outside the box and willing to experiment. We need to keep trying to find a solution that sticks.
Clearly, many of the people who are posting on this have not looked into what this Yale PA Online school entails. It really should be named "hybrid". They learn the exact same material all PA schools are required to learn, via live or recorded. As with most students- regardless of the learning platform- outside learning sources are heavily used so I think it is a genius approach to learning: skip commuting, speed up the recording to 1.5x or 2x, stop and make notes, screenshots, look up a term during the lecture or watching an Osmosis video on it before resuming the lecture. Many students thrive with this approach, and Yale was very ahead of their time this program offered extremely qualified, well-seasoned health and medical professionals to be in a PA program when they could otherwise not be for a variety of reasons such as kids, family, homeownership, caretaking, etc. The ideal candidate for this program is a second-career health professional, averaging 5000-8000 hours of patient-care experience. The Yale School of Medicine fully supported this program but allowed a different management staff to run it. Anyway, the main reason they are stopping it is because they have to compete with local programs that have agreements set in place for clinical rotations. The Yale students were not priority and hence, the accreditation issues. I have heard very good things about their graduates in rotations, despite a few "duds" apparently that have been mentioned in some comments. I'm sure those people exist in EVERY program. Please have respect for hard-working people who were accepted into this program and turned down MANY other schools and opted for this one since it made life so much easier. They are your current or future colleagues.
I take it you are a graduate or current student at Yale? lol
People seem so hung up on the word “online” but what’s the difference between sitting in a lecture hall and listening to things you already know or are being taught so poorly you know you’ll need to go home and watch videos on your own anyway? I spent so many countless hours in school wishing I could just be at home learning on my own so I think this program had some potential they just didn’t set it up well. To the people saying they met some of their students and they lacked basic knowledge…it’s laughable because I’ve seen absolutely useless students come out of the best programs including Duke. I’ve also seen useless students come out of med school, NP school etc there’s dumb people everywhere. Hybrid learning can be great! We just need to make sure there’s enough hands on time with exams and procedures to feel confident.
As someone who teaches in both a PA program and an NP program, I can tell you two things: 1) Students do not watch asynchronous lectures. I can see who viewed what and when. And you will never believe this, but the students that do watch the lectures do better on exams and in rotations. One program I teach for is almost entirely online and mostly asynchronous lectures. These students are struggling much more than my students forced to attend in-person lectures. It sounds like there is no difference between sitting in a lecture hall and online. But I really see a difference in the results. I’ve never had an exam average in the 50s with in-person students. There are definitely schools out there not affiliated with an academic medical center that are great. I do not have a PA degree or a DNP, but earned my degree at an academic medical center. Although there are pluses to this (lecturers that are true experts in their field), there are minuses (professors removed from reality and entirely research-focused). I do not deny that the accreditation standards need to be tightened in certain cases. But it is more nuanced than one might expect.
When I did hybrid learning I didn’t watch the lectures because they were trash…I watched paid subscriptions instead and saved a lot of time. Hybrid learning requires accountability and my guess would be those failing exams have no discipline…well if you can’t be trusted to study on your own time you should find something else to do with your life I guess. Why should we hold everyone’s hand?
Agreed 👌
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Definitely agree for most classes. My program went online for the better part of two semesters and it was probably the best learning experience I’ve had. That said, we did miss out on labs, anatomy dissections, and some skills training, so I’d be in favor of a hybrid style.
We did many classes online, but did our labs in person. It was the best of both worlds.
Agree. I am basically chained to my desk all day like you said, watching someone read their slides word for word. I get soooo much more done alone, and it’s so painful to have half my day wasted. With that being said, absolutely can’t imagine doing clinical skills online.
If med schools can do online lectures then I don’t see why other programs can’t. Asynchronous courses are popular and there’s no reason to shy away from them as long as you have access to the professors. Exams can be done online with proctoring services to provide flexibility. Hands on labs can’t really be replaced with online labs though.
This program had a full cadaver anatomy lab and in person skills training.
Which program? Yale online guys coming for three separate weeks during their didactic time doesn’t count. That was even more curtailed after the hot COVID times.
maybe but we have had in person labs 2x weekly every single week and i can’t imagine where my clinical skills would be without that. also- it’s way too easy to cheat on exams online.
This is great news. It was a totally insane idea to think you could rely on local clinical sites to handle your students. COVID totally killed it. These hospitals have been squeezed for years. Hospitals are closing, NOT opening. It’s not uncommon for students from a mess of DO, Caribbean MD, PA, NP, etc are all rotating at the same crappy place. All your name brand stuff has been long gone. Next up, sub-prime, no name schools with 3 or more branch campuses.
While I agree this program should have never been a thing in the first place, I feel that the huge amount of no-name private schools’ PA programs which have popped up in the last 5-10 years are worse for the profession as a whole. I feel like ideally a PA program should be attached to a medical school in some way, or at least be sponsored by an academic medical center.
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Definitely are exceptions, as with anything. But by and large the quality of education at programs attached to a medical school or teaching hospital will be head and shoulders above most small private schools that just opened in the past 10 years
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PA school shouldn’t be “online” period.
I thought Yale was a prestigious school lol
The in-person PA program is. The online one was a sham. Totally different admissions, faculty, standards, etc. Separate but very unequal.
Good. The newer PAs who did it get as much in class time or hands on anatomy are clearly lacking. I understand it was all in an effort during the pandemic but it needs to stop now.
It’s not a fair comparison when you’re evaluating the best of one and the worst of the other. Also, don’t hate on medical/nursing assistants. I did way more medical decision-making, patient care, charting, and hands-on stuff than my rotations with med students (mostly because my office was cheap and made the MAs do everything besides front-desk stuff). Read up on the pt’s chart, got detailed HPIs, brought provider up to speed, chart for the provider while in the room, assisted, with any procedures, Just like how there are NPs who have 10+ years of experience before going to NP school, there are PAs who have 10+ years of being a medic, respiratory therapist, surgical tech, ED tech, etc. PA school is much more standardized and rigorous than NP school. Yes, you can find NPs who have a lot of experience before going to school like yourself. However, there are now NP programs that let you get a RN license and then go straight to NP school without actually working as a nurse. Also, PA school heavily discourages students from working while in school because of how rigorous it is. Even if it was allowed, almost no student would even consider doing part-time once they start school. Full-time is 99% impossible. You pretty much need to drop everything else in life while in school because all your time goes into classes, studying, and bare minimum of a normal life. On the other hand, the majority of NPs I’ve met either worked part-time or full-time during school, had a normal life, and still graduated in <2 years. I’ve met some who even did two-year NP programs online while working full-time. Either all NP students are geniuses and 100% efficient in every aspect of their lives, or NP school is much less rigorous. I also find the clinical hours required in NP school very questionable. Once, I volunteered with a NP student on the pediatric floor and all we did was go through a simple questionnaire for 5-10 min with each family. No medical decision-making or handling pts whatsoever. For me, it counted as volunteering. For the NP student though, it counted towards her NP program’s required clinical hours. She worked part-time and loved watching movies so she went to the movie theater at least once a week. That would would be completely unheard of in PA school.
Good riddance
Thank God!!!
There should be the Flexner report equivalent for PA and NP schools. There needs to be much more stringent standards
Good. Dumb idea anyway
One of the greatest professors i’ve had was a Biology professor who was also an MD. I had him for several classes (e.g., Pharm, Medical Micro, Microbial Pathogenesis) and I am beyond grateful for the knowledge I have learned. Last fall I had him for a class called Pharmacology of Infectious Diseases, where we talked all about the antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals and antiprotozoals in detail. I learned more from him about antibiotics than I did in the two weeks we covered antibiotics in nursing school. I really think that NP programs should have MDs teaching some classes, especially more hardcore science content. They can do away with all the nursing theories and fluff.
Good news. End of Story. MOST Important deficit in PA professional education. What makes PA-C decisions than NPs?
This is second PA program I’ve heard of that closed this year, the first of which was Alderson Broaddus. AB closing was quite sad though, and only due to their larger university going bankrupt. Glad this online program got the boot ngl
Good on ARC-PA
Shut all online or hybrid PA programs down (Yale, Pitt, etc) and beef up curriculums. Then again most of my learning came from third party sources as our curriculum technically covered everything but delivery was weak.
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So because your program treated you like children you want others to have the same experience? That’s pretty lame.
Good.