Physician Assistant: Providing Equitable Clinical Exposure to Your Students

This PA-focused webinar featured Carol Gorney, DCE at the University of Iowa's PA program, alongside Exxat's VP of Customer Experience Dr. Vishaka Bhave, discussing how PA programs can leverage Exxat Prism's data collection and reporting tools to ensure students receive equitable clinical experiences — a key requirement under ARC-PA's sixth edition standards. The session walked through practical benchmarking strategies using site assessments, patient logging, timesheets, and evaluation data, with real-world examples of how Carol uses these tools to monitor and intervene when equity gaps arise.

View Slide Deck

Key Takeaways:

• ARC-PA sixth edition standards now require setting-specific demographic tracking, making real-time benchmarking essential. Programs must demonstrate that students see emergency patients in the ED, elderly patients in internal medicine, and all pediatric lifespans (infant, child, adolescent) in pediatrics — not just longitudinally but per rotation, which demands ongoing monitoring rather than end-of-year reviews.
   
• A multi-pronged benchmarking approach combines patient volume, demographics, hours, and performance data. Carol recommended cross-referencing patient logs (volume and case mix), timesheet hours (including telehealth versus in-person), evaluation scores, and even end-of-rotation exam performance by site to get a complete picture of whether a site is truly providing an equitable experience.
   
• Site assessments housed in Exxat Prism create a baseline that can be validated against student data. Programs can use customizable site assessment forms to capture expected patient volumes, demographics, and hours during initial and ongoing site visits, then compare those expectations against what students actually report — flagging sites where reality doesn't match the intake data.
   
• Real-time reports enable mid-rotation interventions rather than after-the-fact discoveries. Carol shared a concrete example of reassigning a student to a second internal medicine placement at a geriatric-heavy site after data showed the student's first placement wasn't producing enough elderly patient encounters, and another where a "family medicine" site was pulled after logs revealed 70% of cases were podiatry overflow.
   
• Preceptor evaluation data should be reviewed for mismatches between scores and written comments before publishing to students. Carol emphasized that preceptors sometimes rate students as "adequate" while writing comments that suggest otherwise, and that DCEs should review evaluations and address these concerns directly with the preceptor to ensure appropraite assessment of student performance. 

Meet your presenters:

Carol Gorney MPAS, PA-C
Clinical Professor, Director of Clinical Education Dept. of Physician Assistant Studies and Services
University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine
Carol Gorney PA-C is a graduate of the university of Iowa PA program. She practiced clinically in a variety of roles including family medicine, emergency medicine and obstetrics before becoming faculty at the Carver College of Medicine PA program. She is a Professor and the Director of Clinical Education. Her role on the clinical team is to ensure students in their clinical year meet expectations for learning outcomes and competencies.  

Dr. Vishakha Bhave, PhD
Vishakha is Exxat's Vice President of Customer Experience and has over 17 years of teaching and scholarship expertise. Her academic background includes roles such as Associate Professor at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine School of Pharmacy. She leads the strategic direction of Exxat products, ensuring robust support and alignment. Her extensive involvement in university committees reflects her commitment to shaping education.