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

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

Duke Scholars

Author Karen Jane Hills Family Medicine and Community Health, Physician Assistant Pr ...