Physician Assistant, MS

Program Director: Jane Trapp (4310 Health Sciences Building; 252-744-1107; trappj@ecu.edu)

The Department of Physician Assistant Studies in the College of Allied Health Sciences at East Carolina University (ECU) has held continued accreditation since 1996 with students graduating from the program receiving a master of science in physician assistant studies. The Physician Assistant master’s degree program takes pride in developing leaders who inspire, empower and influence positive change. The mission of the Department of Physician Assistant Studies is to prepare physician assistant graduates through educational and clinical experiences to improve the health and well-being of patients while increasing access to primary medical care in eastern North Carolina and the state. We seek to achieve this mission in an educational community where faculty, staff, clinical instructors, students, and other health care providers work together in an atmosphere of mutual respect, cooperation, compassion, and commitment.

The highly structured rigorous curriculum is divided into 2 phases, the didactic phase and clinical phase. The didactic phase consists of traditional lectures, small group teaching, hands on and skills labs, simulation, team and case-based learning. The didactic phase is 15 months in length and consists of 59 semester hours conducted on ECU’s Health Science campus. The clinical phase is delivered over a 12-month period and consists of 46 semester hours of clinical related courses and rotations (8 required and 2 elective). During clinical rotations students spend 4-8 weeks in family medicine, woman’s health and prenatal care, pediatrics, emergency medicine, surgery, hospital and clinic based internal medicine, psychiatry and geriatrics where they are mentored by licensed health-care professionals (physicians, physician assistants, and other health care providers) to develop competence in professionalism, performing history and physicals, ordering and interpreting lab studies and imaging modalities, critical thinking and differential diagnosis generation; and developing management plans which are required to graduate and enter clinical practice.

Admission Prerequisite Requirements

The following courses are to be completed prior to entering the program and require at least a 3.0 GPA.

Human anatomy and physiology (lecture) - minimum 6 credit hours
Human anatomy and physiology (lab) - minimum 2 credit hours
Genetics - minimum 3 credit hours
General chemistry or higher (lecture) - minimum 6 credit hours
General chemistry or higher (lab) - minimum 2 credit hours
Microbiology - minimum 3 credit hours
Introductory psychology or higher - minimum 3 credit hours
Statistics - minimum 3 credit hours

Degree Requirements

The degree requires a minimum of 105 s.h. as follows:

Core courses - 59 s.h.

Note:

To continue to the clinical portion of the curriculum, the student must successfully pass all didactic courses listed above with an overall 3.0 GPA and no more than 6 s.h. of Cs.

Clinical courses - 46 s.h.

Comprehensive Assessment Requirement

All ECU graduate programs require students to successfully complete a comprehensive assessment. The assessment for this program is a Physician Assistant Summative Examination.

Licensure/Certification Requirements in North Carolina

The curriculum for all ECU academic programs have been designed to meet the licensure/certification requirements in North Carolina and prepare students to sit for licensure/certification exams in North Carolina. The various licensure boards in each state are responsible for setting requirements for licensure/certification in their state. Other states have their own requirements. Should a prospective student desire to work in another state, please check with the requirements of the state. Search our state Licensure Dashboard for further information.