Physician Associate Studies MSc draft

Program Overview

This MSc Physician Associate Studies program equips students with the knowledge and skills to work as Physician Associates in modern clinical environments. The program focuses on developing students as clinicians, leaders, and pioneers in the profession, covering core concepts in medicine, clinical skills, and research. Students undertake compulsory placements in various medical specialties, and assessment includes coursework, reflective logs, clinical portfolios, and a national exam.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

This MSc Physician Associate Studies program is designed to equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills to work as a Physician Associate in a modern clinical environment. The program aims to develop students holistically as clinicians, leaders, and pioneers in the profession. The course aims to inform and equip the practitioner with the necessary knowledge and skills to function in a modern clinical environment as a Physician Associate. The physician associate is a type of health professional whose development has been led by the Department of Health and has involved the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and Royal College of General Practitioners (RGCP), as well as the profession itself through the faculty of physician associates (FPA). This course aims to holistically develop you as a clinician, leader and pioneer of the profession.

Outline:

Year 1:

• Foundations of Clinical Medicine in Physician Associate Practice (Compulsory):
• Covers core concepts of anatomy and physiology within the core body systems (Cardiovascular, Respiratory, Neurological, Gastrointestinal, Endocrine, Ears, Eyes, Nose and Throat, Musculoskeletal)
• Includes investigations such as interpreting blood results, ECG’s, Chest X-Rays, Urinalysis, and Physiological parameters.
• Explores the pathophysiology of core conditions (for example, Cardiovascular disease, Diabetes, COPD), and the range of evidence used to inform a differential diagnosis.
• Covers management of patients using a holistic approach to patient education, lifestyle, social prescribing, and disease prevention.
• Year 1 Clinical Placement (Compulsory):
• Focuses on core clinical skills for year 1, including taking observations, calculating and documenting National Early Warning Score (NEWS), Performing and interpreting ECGs, Peak flow assessment and inhaler technique, performing venepuncture, performing cannulation, Performing injection, perform urine dipstick, basic life support.
• Includes mini clinical evaluation examinations for year 1: Cardiovascular, Respiratory and Gastrointestinal (excluding PR examination) systems.
• Covers core communication skills with patients, relatives, carers, and members of the multidisciplinary team.
Emphasizes upholding confidentiality. Focuses on performing clinical histories in the core areas (cardiovascular, Gastrointestinal, Respiratory, Neurological, Haematological, Endocrinology systems).
• Includes preparation for participation in case-based discussion, aspects of person-centered care, respecting dignity, diversity and difference.
• Emphasizes formulating differential diagnoses and management plans.
• Includes personal and professional development, including attitudes, knowledge, self-awareness, and reflection required for professional practice as a Physician Associate.
Covers guidance on professional and personal limitations, including practicing without impairment from substance abuse, cognitive deficiency or mental illness. Demonstrates professional behavior and probity.
• Value-Based Medicine for Physician Associates (Compulsory):
• Covers teamwork, professionalism, complex situations, and safeguarding and its impact on professional clinical practice.
• Includes definitions of evidence-based practice.
• Covers environmental and social influences of health e.g.
age, ethnicity, class, gender, health promotions, health inequalities, and epidemiology.
• Includes consent, capacity, safeguarding, professional body regulations, patient safety, and quality improvement.
• Focuses on understanding own personal values through reflection and reflexive practice.
• Pharmacotherapeutics 1 (Compulsory):
• Covers taking medication histories for prescribed, non-prescribed medications, herbal medicines, supplements, and drugs of abuse.
• Includes clinical therapeutics and the management of disease related to body systems.
This includes, but is not limited to, Cardiovascular, Respiratory, Neurological, Gastrointestinal, and Haematological systems.
• Focuses on practical applications of pharmacokinetics such as patient communication and drug counselling with patients, carers, and other healthcare professionals, initiating treatments, and using resources such as the BNF to make informed decisions.
• Covers therapeutics, pharmacokinetics, medication side effects, and interactions, including multiple treatments, long-term conditions, non-prescribed drugs, the role of antimicrobial stewardship, and patient concordance in safe prescribing.
• Foundations of clinical consultation and examination skills (Compulsory):
• Includes simulated patient histories, including: history of presenting complaints, past medical histories, review of body systems, medication history, identifying concerns, relevant psychological and social factors contributing to patients presenting complaints.
Includes communicating to patients and family in simulation.
• Covers simulated physical examination, for example, Cardiovascular, Neurological, and Gastrointestinal examinations, how to interpret clinical examination findings, and their relationship to making a diagnosis.
• Focuses on core clinical procedures in a simulated environment, for example, venepuncture, subcutaneous injections, intramuscular injections, and cannulation.
• Includes key stages of the clinical reasoning process to formulate the differential diagnosis.
• Covers the stages of developing a management plan related to the core conditions.
• Advancing Clinical Consultation and Examination Skills (Compulsory):
• Covers the skills of effective and complex communication to establish patient trust, verbal and non-verbal communication together with professional behaviour.
Focuses on communicating effectively with patients, their relatives, carers, or other advocates, and with colleagues and members of the multidisciplinary team.
• Includes simulated physical examination skills, paying particular attention to intimate and sensitive examination(s).
Focuses on conducting a physical examination on any patient with special sensitivity to gender, age, and cultural background formulating a differential diagnosis.
• Includes core clinical procedures in a simulated environment, for example, urinary catheterisation, taking an ABG, speculum examination, surgical scrubbing.
• Focuses on formulating a detailed differential diagnosis from the interpretation of multiple and complex data sets.
• Covers the stages of developing a management related to conditions within the core specialties, for example, paediatrics, mental health.
• Advancing Clinical Medicine in Physician Associate practice (Compulsory):
• Covers developed concepts of anatomy and physiology related to second year teaching themes including Obstetrics and Gynaecology, neurological (Mental health), foetal development (Paediatrics), and Musculoskeletal systems.
• Includes investigations such as interpreting Arterial Blood Gasses, Blood results, Abdominal X-Ray, and Cervical Samples.
• Explores pathophysiology of second year-based conditions (for example, Endometriosis, Ectopic Pregnancy, complications in childbirth, Croup, psychosis), and using a range of evidence to determine differential diagnosis.
• Focuses on clinical reasoning to determine the most likely diagnosis and developing management plans for patients using holistic approaches to patient education, lifestyle, social prescribing, and disease prevention.

Year 2:

• Year 2 Clinical Placement (Compulsory):
• Covers core clinical skills for year 2: perform surgical scrubbing up, male and female catheterisation, arterial blood gas (ABG), obtain blood cultures, swabs, place nasogastric (NG) tubes (in simulation only), set up infusions, use different forms of local anaesthetic, perform wound care and closure, and intermediate life support.
• Includes mini clinical evaluation examinations for year 2: Paediatric examination, Gynaecological examination including speculum exam, Obstetric examination, Musculoskeletal examination, Mental Health examination.
• Covers core communication skills with patients, relatives, carers, and members of the multidisciplinary team.
Emphasizes upholding confidentiality. Focuses on performing clinical histories in the core areas such as Paediatrics, Gynaecology, Obstetrics, mental health, and emergency medicine.
• Includes preparation for participation in case-based discussion, aspects of person-centred care, respecting dignity, diversity and difference.
• Emphasizes formulating differential diagnoses and management plans.
• Includes personal and professional development, including attitudes, knowledge, self-awareness, and reflection required for professional practice as a Physician Associate.
Covers guidance on professional and personal limitations, including practicing without impairment from substance abuse, cognitive deficiency or mental illness. Demonstrates professional behavior and probity.
• Physician Associate Research Project (Compulsory):
• Focuses on the knowledge, critical skills, and clinical knowledge that have been accumulated during the taught modules and the clinical placements.
• Includes the ability to complete a research project, helping students to better understand:
• The identification and appraisal of the strengths, limitations, and implications for research;
• Ethics and research governance processes;
• Systematic and literature reviews;
• Research Methodologies in health care settings;
• Quantitative approaches including statistical analysis;
• Qualitative approaches;
• Mixed Methods;
• The research journey from proposal to completion;
• The roles and responsibilities of the researcher;
• Dissemination of evidence through, publication, posters, conference presentations, journal articles, texts, reports for policy and practice.
• Pharmacotherapeutics 2 (Compulsory):
• Covers assessing patients with complex presentations in specialties such as obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, surgery, acute medicine, psychiatry, musculoskeletal medicine, and the elderly.
• Includes carrying out an assessment of benefit and risk for the patient starting medication, considering the medication history and potential medication interactions in partnership with the patient and, if appropriate, their relatives, carers or other advocates.
• Focuses on recognizing the challenges of safe prescribing for patients in high-risk groups such as those with long-term conditions, multiple morbidities and medications, in pregnancy, at extremes of age, and at the end of life.
• Covers preparing safe and legal prescriptions for a prescriber, tailored to the specific needs of individual patients, using either paper or electronic systems and using decision support tools where necessary.
• Includes detecting and reporting adverse medication reactions and therapeutic interactions, appropriately stopping or changing medication, and recognizing the risks of over-prescribing.
This will include the ethical and legal considerations of preparing a prescription.

Assessment:

• Assessment includes coursework, reflective logs, and clinical portfolios.
• There is a national exam at the end of the second year, including a Multiple Choice Question paper and an Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCE).

Teaching:

• The course is designed around in-person study.
• There may be some online learning activities.
• The theory and clinical aspect of the course will cover community medicine; general hospital medicine; general surgery; accident and emergency; mental health; obstetrics and gynaecology; and paediatrics (primarily acute setting).

Careers:

• The University has an award-winning Careers and Employability service which provides a variety of employability-enhancing experiences; through the curriculum, through employer contact, tailored group sessions, individual information, advice, and guidance.
• Careers and Employability aims to deliver a service which is inclusive, impartial, welcoming, informed, and tailored to your personal goals and aspirations, to enable you to develop as an individual and contribute to the business and community in which you will live and work.
• The Careers and Employability service provides access to part-time jobs, extra-curricular employability-enhancing workshops, and offers practical one-to-one help with career planning, including help with CVs, applications, and mock interviews.
• The service also delivers group sessions on career planning within each course and has a wide range of extensive information covering graduate jobs.

Other:

• You will undertake compulsory placements in:
• community medicine
• emergency department
• general hospital medicine
• general surgical
• mental health
• obstetrics and gynaecology
• paediatrics.

Note:

The text does not specifically state details about the program schedule. However, it mentions that there is one intake per year for this course in January.