title: Does previous healthcare experience increase success in physician assistant training?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Healthcare experience is used by many physician assistant (PA) programs to rank applicants. Despite a large healthcare literature base evaluating admissions factors, little information is available on the relationship of healthcare experience and educational outcomes. We aimed to test whether previous healthcare experience is associated with increased success during the clinical portion of the PA educational process.
  
  
  METHODS
  Hours of direct healthcare experience reported on Central Application Service for Physician Assistants applications for 124 students in the classes of 2009 through 2013 were associated with a calculated average preceptor evaluation score for each student and with average standardized-patient examination scores for a subset of students.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Average student age was 28.7 years and median healthcare experience was 2,257 hours (range 390-16,400). Previous healthcare experience was not significantly correlated with preceptor evaluations or standardized-patient examination scores.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This 5-year single institution pilot study did not support the hypothesis that healthcare experience is associated with improved clinical year outcomes.
authors.affiliation: In the PA program at the University of Iowa's Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City, Theresa Hegmann is a clinical professor and director of curriculum and evaluation, and Katie Iverson is an associate faculty member. The authors have disclosed no potential conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise.
authors.forename: Theresa
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hegmann
authors.forename: Katie
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Iverson
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010823:Physician Assistants; D010865:Pilot Projects