Coming to “TERMS” with Learner Professionalism Remediation: Guiding Steps for Physician Assistant Educators

Professionalism is a fundamental principle of medicine affirmed as a student and applied as a health care provider. During graduate educational training, physician assistant (PA) students may fail to excel in professionalism standards, demanding an obligation for remediation. Physician assistant educators are charged with the construction and execution of effective professionalism remediation strategies for students to help ensure competent healthcare delivery upon graduation. The aim of this article is to provide clear, applicable professionalism remediation strategies to novice and experienced PA educators to be efficiently implemented with PA students through discovery of findings within published literature to be grouped into connecting themes. The article encompasses several identified themes linked to successful PA student remediation, such as remediation training for PA faculty, early remediation interventions, consideration of confounding factors upon remediation plans, PA student remediation reflections, as well as professionalism modeling within PA educators. Physician assistant faculty can impact the construction and execution of effective remediation strategies for PA students to help ensure competent health care delivery upon graduation.