Physician Assistant, MS

Program Director: Alan Gindoff (4310-K Health Sciences Building; 252-744-1700; gindoffa@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 program is focused on providing the skills, knowledge, and professional behaviors necessary to provide: high-quality, compassionate, evidenced based, professional, patient centered, interdisciplinary primary care to those in rural/medically-underserved areas of eastern North Carolina and beyond. 

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, active learning 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 rotations (8 required and 2 elective).  During clinical rotations students spend 4-6 weeks in areas such as family medicine, woman’s health, pediatrics, emergency medicine, surgery, hospital and clinic based internal medicine, psychiatry and geriatrics where they are mentored by licensed health-care professionals (physicians and physician assistants) 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.