CapYear Cast - Ashley Hughes, MSPAS, PA-C

Today on the CapYear Cast, we are joined by Ashely Hughes, MSPAS, PA-C. Ashley is the Program Director for Bryant University's Master in Physician Associate Studies program, and she was kind enough to share her time and her insights with us. In this brief interview, Ashley talks about what a competitive program like Bryant's looks for in an aspiring applicant. Besides the undergraduate must-do's like advanced course work and solid a GPA, she discusses several ways for candidates to stand out. For instance, gap years spent gaining patient-facing hours, demonstrating an ability to balance work and school, PA-shadowing, and even tips for how to make your essay stand out. All in all, it's a must-listen for current and future PA-school applicants! Thanks for listening & subscribe for updates! Graduates (& soon to be graduates) - Get clinical experience and a paycheck! Create your FREE profile on https://capyear.co/ to find employers looking to hire pre-health graduates and current students. Plus, you can find a growing number of clinical research positions. Applying to Medical or PA school? CapYear offers application support and career advice from physicians, PAs, and nurses to launch your career and make your application for MD/PA school stand out from the crowd. Providers - CapYear saves time and money by proactively sourcing applicants for your positions from a pool of diverse, college-educated talent looking for clinical positions to launch their careers. The future PAs, nurses, and physicians of America can fill many entry-level clinical positions, support your team and help deliver a great patient experience. Visit our job board, post a job, and let our team get to work for you today! https://jobs.capyear.co/ For more information on gap year placement, medical assistant hiring, or MD/PA school application support, please email us at [e-mail] https://capyear.co/ https://jobs.capyear.co/ Transcript below: John Walkup: Hi, and welcome back to the CapYear Cast. I'm your host, John Walkup, and joining us today is Ashley Hughes. She's the program director for Bryant University's Master of Science and Physician Associate Studies Program. Ashley, welcome to the program. Ashley Hughes, MSPAS, PA-C: Hi, John. Thank you very much. John: I'm glad you could join us. So you've been in this position for about a year now - what drew you to Bryant? Ashley: I had been working in PA education for close to 10 years. I believe it was about seven years in the role of an academic coordinator, and I was looking for a role that I would be able to get into that would allow me to really try to redesign and refine a curriculum a little bit more so than I already was. The opportunity was available at Bryant. They had the position open for the program director. I met with the president of the university and the provost, and they were so incredibly welcoming. They, they're very supportive and understanding of the goals that I had for being able to design the curriculum to a point where, you know, I felt that we would. Be a hundred percent preparing our students for their board examination and let me run with it. So it just seems like a really great fit. John: That's great. Bryant has a unique program. I know you do gross anatomy at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University. There's your 2000 hours of didactic lessons - what sets Brian apart? Ashley: So we actually have a few different areas of the curriculum that are very unique to Bryant. So one of them is, yes, we do send our students to the Brown Anatomy Lab, and that's where they meet with the same instructor that teaches the Brown Medical School students and they have a very condensed anatomy course. I actually teach the history and physical examination course. It's not typical for a program director to be that involved in the education of the program. But I very much enjoy doing so, and I have the entire core faculty involved in that. Lastly, we have what we call an immersive clinical simulation experience. That we have run throughout an entire week for our students where they're in the clinical simulation lab, caring for patients, using the skills that they've learned in the clinical medicine courses, and that is very new for us that we've designed this year, and it's worked out very well, and the students have really liked it and enjoyed the entire time. John: All right, we're going to get into it now. So if you look at any ranking out there, like US news or whatever, a physician associate is usually one of the top jobs, if not the top job. It's always top five. That makes for a lot of competition for limited spots, especially in sought after programs like Bryant. So, from your perspective, you're the program director, I'd like to talk about what makes an ideal candidate for the Bryant University program. Tell me about the characteristics you're looking for in a successful applicant. Ashley: So if you look at our mission statement, our ...