MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

Audience: The audience is college students interested in applying to PA school (pre-PA students), including myself as this is my own career goal. The readers can be classified as a lay audience since students reading the guide likely do not already know much about applying to PA school.

Context: A large number of students at universities are interested in biology or the health sciences and study this as their major. A popular path for these students is medical school, for which a considerable amount of information is available on the internet. However, allied health careers are not as spoken about online even though these careers are becoming increasingly common. The lack of information about physician assistant schools in particular can lead to confusion for college students pursuing this career. A web document outlining the important steps to be taken during undergraduate years to apply to PA school would be helpful to these students who need more guidance.

Purpose: To provide college students with a clear understanding of what physician assistant schools expect of them during their undergraduate years by outlining the important steps of applying to PA school.

Document Type: Content for use in a website entry by the UMD pre-physician assistant club (I am a member of the executive board for this club).

Design/format:

*Intro:
-Discuss the lack of information about PA careers and how this document can be useful for pre-PA students
-What the physician Assistant career consists of
-How to decide between PA school and other careers in medicine

*Checklist:
-Provide a checklist for what students should complete in each year of undergrad
-Include university resources and programs that could be helpful to students
-Provide a template for organizing information about PA schools since each school has different requirements

*Patient contact hours:
-Discuss options for how to get direct patient contact hours which are required for PA school
-Highlight the importance of paid healthcare experience

*CASPA application:
-Introduce students to the PAEA where they can get info about PA schools
-Explain the components of the CASPA application and how to approach them

*FAQs
-Get real questions from students in the UMD pre-PA club and answer them here

(Include images and helpful referral links throughout)

Citation style: A combination of curated links and natural language citations

A, really important guide that you can share with the Pre-PA club. What materials do they already have? Can you include a timeline?

Also, you might address the differences between med school approach and PA approach as a way to address those looking to make a change OR keep both pathways open. I think the clinical hours are way longer for PA, compared to MedS, which surprises people.

I would select some local programs to profile.

Mb