Physician Assistant Articles

Penn College’s physician assistant program celebrated PA Week – observed annually Oct. 6-12 – with an outdoor pizza lunch for its students on Monday. PA Week is promoted by the American Academy of Physician Associates to celebrate all that physician associates/assistants (PAs) have accomplished, highlight the care they provide, and elevate the profession.

Two Pennsylvania College of Technology physician assistant studies students feel inspired and grateful following a recent clinical education rotation in Peru. Erin T. Braxton, of Berwyn, Catherine Coy, of Clifton Park, New York, spent five weeks in Trujillo, one of Peru’s largest cities. They completed their elective clinical rotation at Florencia de Mora hospital, with Braxton focusing on obstetrics and gynecology and Coy on pediatrics.

A group of students and faculty who will soon take part in Global Experience courses in the Dominican Republic gathered recently in Le Jeune Chef Restaurant, where, while getting to know one another, they were treated to a Dominican menu and learned more about the Caribbean nation they soon will visit.

For the second consecutive year, Pennsylvania College of Technology physician assistant graduates have bested the national first-attempt pass rate for the Physician Assistant National Certifying Exam. Ninety-four percent of Penn College’s Class of 2023 graduates – who completed their degrees in August – passed the exam on their first attempt, while 100% of the 2022 graduating class passed on their first try. The nationwide first-attempt pass rate for both years is 92%.

Students in the physician assistant program capped off PA Week, celebrated Oct. 6-12 every year, with a Wednesday pizza picnic in front of the Physician Assistant Center.

Pennsylvania College of Technology’s physician assistant program hosted an open house on Sept. 15 to showcase recently completed renovations that promise to provide a true-to-life setting for hands-on education. Throughout the Physician Assistant Center, updates provide equipment and spaces that mirror the scenarios students will encounter in the clinical rotations they complete during their final year of study. New spaces include a Family Medicine Lab, a Women’s Health Lab and an Emergency Medicine Lab.

Helping others to feel comfortable talking about mental health is vitally important to new Pennsylvania College of Technology graduate Tori Siler: because 800,000 people worldwide die by suicide every year (an average of one person every 40 seconds), because most individuals see a medical professional within a month of taking their life, and on the most personal level, because her father took his life in 2015, when Siler was 14 years old.

As renovations continue at Penn College's Physician Assistant Center, students in instructor Franklin H. Reber Jr.'s Concrete Construction class spent much of their Friday making complementary exterior improvements.

The 11th Science Festival for local schoolchildren and their families, held annually at Penn College (but for that 2021 COVID-related pause), brought 682 adventurous participants to the campus Field House on Feb.

Bryan M. Bilbao, who earned a combined bachelor’s/master’s degree in physician assistant studies from Pennsylvania College of Technology in August, recently received a Thomas J. Lemley Award for Health Disparities from the Pennsylvania Society of Physician Assistants. Award winners were announced Nov. 4 at the society’s annual conference in Pittsburgh.