Program Competencies

The Saint Joseph's University PA Program level student competencies required to enter clinical practice were developed referencing the competencies from PAEA, AAPA, ARC-PA, and NCCPA, (collectively known as the Cross-Org Competencies Review Task Force: https://paeaonline.org/our-work/current-issues/... to address clinical and technical skills, clinical reasoning and problem-solving abilities, interpersonal and communication skills, medical knowledge, and professional behaviors; the NCCPA Content Blueprint for entry-level medical content and tasks; the ARC-PA Standards and the most common diseases and skills used in medicine. These core competencies will be assessed within the final four months of the program to ensure and verify that each and every student meets the program requirements required to enter clinical practice.

At the completion of the program the PA student will be able to:

1. Demonstrate proficiency of the clinical and technical skills necessary to enter clinical practice with a focus on those skills beneficial to a family practice provider.
2. Integrate clinical reasoning skills, medical decision-making, and problem-solving abilities through all aspects of patient care. Formulate robust differential diagnoses and determine appropriate next steps, assessments, and prognoses, and develop well-reasoned acute and chronic treatment plans.
3. Develop strong interpersonal and interprofessional communication skills with an emphasis on a person/patient-centered approach to medicine. Demonstrate competency in written, oral, and electronic forms of communication. Identify when a referral is indicated and work effectively with physicians and other healthcare professionals as a member of an interprofessional patient-centered healthcare team.
4. Possess and apply a thorough biomedical, and clinical science knowledge along with a core medical knowledge via a person/patient-centered approach that focuses on the understanding, analyzing, and evaluation of acute and/or chronic diseases/conditions that occur throughout the lifespan; distinguishing the definitions, etiologies, risk factors, epidemiology, pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, diagnostics, treatments (pharmacotherapies and non-pharmacotherapies), assessments, plans, complications, health promotion/counseling, disease prevention/monitoring, and prognoses of these diseases/conditions that are essential for practice and patient care.
5. Demonstrate professional behaviors in all aspects of patient care and have a robust knowledge of cultural awareness and humility, diversity equity and inclusion, social and physical determinants of health, bioethics, healthcare policy, reimbursement, coding/billing, end-of-life care, health policy and legal issues as they relate to patient care.