Physician assistant education and other graduate-level health professions education is designed to enroll students who are prepared for the rigors of the demanding health science curriculum. Many PA educators have expressed that their incoming students struggle with foundational subjects that are key to success in the didactic year of their program. Significant stressors impact PA program admissions departments when making admissions decisions, such as variability of GPA, variability in quality and content in previous courses, and the length of time since prerequisite courses were taken. As a partner of the PA community, Exam Master recognizes the importance of ensuring that students are ready for the didactic year of their programs. To mitigate this challenge, we have created the Physician Assistant Pre-Matriculation program to assist students as they prepare to enter PA school.

The Physician Assistant Pre-Matriculation program’s core focus is to prepare and refresh incoming PA students on these foundational subjects. PA educators often identify basic science subjects like Anatomy and Physiology as needing a level of remediation that they don’t have time to provide. Our PA Pre-Matriculation program provides a critical understanding of the basic prerequisite science subjects, emphasizing the minimization of knowledge gaps that could result in students falling behind in their early coursework.

Though the primary focus of the PA Pre-Matriculation program is preparation before matriculation, it can also be used during and after the didactic year, since knowledge gaps are usually identified after students have begun the curriculum. The PA Pre-Matriculation program is self-guided and online, so educators can prescribe the program to their students and monitor their progress through the subject learning modules without the need for direct guidance. For students who already know which subjects they struggle with, the self-guided nature of the PA Pre-Matriculation program allows them to take an active role to improve their performance. These students in particular have an opportunity to demonstrate their dedication to succeeding, and the educators can observe the whole process. 

Our PA Pre-Matriculation program is loaded with exercises and information that will help students succeed. Starting with a self-paced review, students can complete in-depth reviews of learning objectives that educators identify as most important. Students work at their own pace through the learning modules while educators and program administrators monitor their activity and results. Throughout the PA Pre-Matriculation program, students are given quizzes to review the information in the learning objective modules. The quizzes are embedded within the learning modules to provide a more interactive experience and help solidify learning. Students are also provided course-specific summative exams at the end of the Pre-Matriculation program designed to assess whether they have met the appropriate learning objectives.

For detailed information about the PA Pre-Matriculation program, click here.