Impact of Professional Development Workshops on PA Faculty Retention and Career Advancement.

Abstract

Introduction: Physician assistant (PA) programs have seen unprecedented growth in the past 10 years with over 300 accredited PA programs currently. With this growth comes the need for qualified faculty.

Methods: This retrospective quantitative data analysis examined the relationship between participation in the PA Education Association (PAEA) workshops and retention in PA education and/or career advancement post workshop attendance. All PA faculty attendees of PAEA workshops using existing data from the workshop rosters and membership profiles from 2017 to 2021 (n = 1600) were analyzed. The 2019 workshop participants (n = 274) served as a subset of the workshop attendees to compare to nonworkshop attendee PA faculty employed in PA education in 2019 (n= 2857). There were 1320 individuals who attended at least one of the PAEA workshops and met inclusion requirements.

Results: Analysis revealed a significant relationship between attending a workshop and remaining in PA education. An odds ratio of 2.2 indicated that individuals who attended a workshop were more than twice as likely currently to be in PA education than those who did not. For the PA faculty who attended a workshop, the number of workshops attended was not found to be a significant predictor (P-value > .05) of attaining a promotion in the time frame observed. For workshop attendees, the number of workshops attended was found to be a significant predictor of staying in PA education (P-value < .05).

Discussion: This study has provided information about the value of professional development programming in helping to retain PA educators in their faculty roles.