How Physician Assistant Programs Use the CASPA Personal Statement in Their Admissions Process

Lopes, John E.; Badur, Michalina; Weis, Nicole

doi:10.1097/jpa.0000000000000065

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The CASPA application provides a variety of information including leadership experience, service activities, employment, and health care experience, which can be used to assess the noncognitive domain. Each applicant is asked to complete a personal statement that expresses “why you would like to be considered for the programs you are applying to.” 8 Lopes et al 9 reported that 93% of PA programs use the personal statement during preliminary admission decision-making; however, a majority of programs expressed concern that the writing was not a novel creation of the applicant. There is also variation among programs in the number of letters of reference required.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple Mini-Interview Utilization in United States Physician Assistant Program Admission Processes

James¹,

Mazur²,

Statler³

et al. 2021

J Physician Assist Educ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Health care program admission processes utilize multi-faceted approaches to evaluate cognitive and noncognitive attributes of applicants. The multiple mini-interview (MMI) was developed in response to the need for a reliable and validated tool to assess noncognitive factors and has been increasingly incorporated into the admissions process by physician assistant (PA) programs. The study's purpose was to explore the current implementation and utilization of the MMI within PA programs. MethodsThe study used a mixed-methods exploratory approach including a telephone survey and semi-structured interview of 11 PA programs using the MMI in their admissions process. Quantitative data collected included demographic information, MMI implementation characteristics, station structure, scoring, feasibility, satisfaction with MMI utilization, and MMI evaluation methods. ResultsDuring the 2015-2016 admissions cycle, the participating programs used from 5 to 10 stations, averaging 7 minutes per station, requiring 8 faculty, 2 staff, and 7 students per interview session. Despite variation in program size, number of applicants, and years of MMI utilization, all participating programs reported that they were satisfied with the format and would continue to utilize the MMI in the admissions process.Conclusions While there is substantial literature describing the use of the MMI within health care programs globally, this study represents the first characterization of its use within PA programs on a national level. Although there was variation among PA program implementation of the MMI, our results are comparable to studies within other health care professions. Additional studies are necessary to further describe the MMI and its correlation with PA program educational outcomes and the impact on diversity.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple Mini-Interview Utilization in United States Physician Assistant Program Admission Processes

James¹,

Mazur²,

Statler³

et al. 2021

J Physician Assist Educ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Detecting Artificial Intelligence-Generated Personal Statements in Professional Physical Therapist Education Program Applications: A Lexical Analysis

Hollman,

Cloud-Biebl,

Krause

et al. 2024

Physical Therapy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objective The objective of this study was to compare the lexical sophistication of personal statements submitted by professional physical therapist education program applicants with those generated by OpenAI’s Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT). Methods Personal statements from 152 applicants and 20 generated by ChatGPT were collected, all in response to a standardized prompt. These statements were coded numerically, then analyzed with recurrence quantification analyses (RQAs). RQA indices including recurrence, determinism, max line, mean line, and entropy were compared with t tests. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was used to examine discriminative validity of RQA indices to distinguish between ChatGPT and human-generated personal statements. Results ChatGPT-generated personal statements exhibited higher recurrence, determinism, mean line, and entropy values than did human-generated personal statements. The strongest discriminator was a 13.04% determinism rate, which differentiated ChatGPT from human-generated writing samples with 70% sensitivity and 91.4% specificity (positive likelihood ratio = 8.14). Personal statements with determinism rates exceeding 13% were 8 times more likely to have been ChatGPT than human generated. Conclusions While RQA can distinguish artificial intelligence-generated text from human-generated text, it is not absolute. Thus, artificial intelligence introduces additional challenges to the authenticity and utility of personal statements. Admissions committees along with organizations providing guidelines in professional physical therapist education program admissions should re-evaluate the role of personal statements in applications. Impact As artificial intelligence-driven chatbots like ChatGPT complicate the evaluation of personal statements, RQA emerges as a potential tool for admissions committees to detect artificial intelligence-generated statements.

show abstract

PA vs. NP

Wright

Pericak

Hogg

2022

Advances in Medical Education, Research, and Ethics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Undergraduate administrators, faculty, and staff support pre-health students during their academic preparation. In addition, they provide them with appropriate advisement services and resources to position them to successfully apply to various health professions programs. While there are similarities and differences between physician assistants (PAs) and nurse practitioners (NPs), they play important roles in the provision of healthcare in the United States and abroad. A better understanding of these two professions is needed. This chapter aims to introduce administrators, faculty, and staff to the scope of practice and educational preparation of PAs and NPs, as well as the application processes for their respective programs. The authors also discuss mental health stressors and burnout experienced by both PA and NP students and providers in hopes of encouraging interventions at the undergraduate level.

show abstract

How Physician Assistant Programs Use the CASPA Personal Statement in Their Admissions Process

Cited by 3 publications

References 15 publications

Multiple Mini-Interview Utilization in United States Physician Assistant Program Admission Processes

Multiple Mini-Interview Utilization in United States Physician Assistant Program Admission Processes

Detecting Artificial Intelligence-Generated Personal Statements in Professional Physical Therapist Education Program Applications: A Lexical Analysis

PA vs. NP

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About