It Takes a Village: Developing a Summative Evaluation Process to Meet Programmatic Needs

All physician assistant (PA) programs are required per accreditation Standard B4.03 to complete a summative evaluation to verify that their soon-to-be graduates have successfully met the program-defined competencies and are ready to transition into clinical practice. In 2019, the PA Program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center updated the summative evaluation process to incorporate the PA Education Association End of Curriculum exam, to convert to online formatting for the Clinical Skills examination and situational judgement tests, and to introduce an eight station objective structure clinical examination component. All 4 components of the summative were mapped to the program-defined competencies, elements of Standard B4.03, and the Competencies for the PA Profession. Cut scores were defined for each component of the summative and remediation activities were designed to address knowledge deficiencies prior to retesting. To date, all students over the past 6 cohorts have successfully completed the objective structure clinical examination and situational judgement test components. There have been isolated failures of the end of curriculum and clinical skills exams which were successfully remediated on the first attempt. Administration of the summative evaluation requires planning and coordination throughout the academic cycle to develop materials for all components, schedule coordination with the simulation center, training of simulated patients, faculty development for consistency in grading, oversight of remediation activities, and triangulation of data to correlate the results of the summative evaluation with other programmatic outcomes.