One of the essential professional attributes of a physician assistant is a commitment to life-long learning and improvement of systems that enhance patient care and the health of the population. The University of Florida School of Physician Assistant Studies (UF SPAS) recognizes that learning occurs through both individual and collaborative study, thoughtful reflection and self-assessment, patient interactions, and formal and informal interactions with faculty, preceptors and other members of the health care team.
Effective learning occurs with a bidirectional flow of information, such that learners become teachers and performance of both the learner and the teacher improves. Thus, there is a professional expectation that students will provide feedback for each educational experience (e.g. course, clinical rotation) in order to improve the quality of our teaching and curriculum.
The UF SPAS continually and systematically collects, uses, and responds to students’ feedback through online questionnaires and focus groups. Numeric results and students’ written comments are carefully reviewed by faculty and SPAS leadership to reward faculty efforts and promote positive curricular change. The UF SPAS is committed to ensuring that our evaluation tools show evidence of validity, are of reasonable length, and are useful for individual faculty and for education quality improvement.
The UF SPAS has established the following guidelines in order to elicit the meaningful participation of every student in the evaluation process.
- Every required course/clinical rotation, instructor/preceptor and clinical site will be evaluated by students. As part of professional development, there is an expectation of 100% completion of the overall course and clerkship evaluations.
- Every student is expected to respond in a professional manner to each item which they feel qualified to answer.
- Strict confidentiality of responses is assured. Evaluation data (numerical ratings and student comments) is de-identified.
Failure to complete clinical rotation and site evaluations within the established timeframe or repeated failure to respond in a timely and reasonable fashion will be reviewed holistically and my impact a student’s professionalism competency evaluation.