Second-year students within the Physician Assistant (PA) program at Wake Forest University School of Medicine recently shared their research with first-year PA students, faculty and guests at the annual Graduate Project Symposium.
The symposium is the culmination of the Graduate Project, a four-course series that spans PA students’ didactic and clinical years. Students formulate a topic relevant to the practice of medicine or patient care, review related literature and critically appraise and synthesize results. In their second year, students present and defend their findings to a faculty panel before sharing with a larger audience at the symposium poster session.
The Graduate Project is purposefully designed to equip students with the skills needed to engage in evidence-based medical decision making and informed, shared decision making with patients. Health disparities among patients with thyroid cancer, neonatal resuscitation and concussion protocols were a few of the topics that students had researched throughout their time at the School of Medicine. Other examples of the 17 topics addressed during this year’s symposium included the benefits of non-pharmacologic treatments in adult ADHD, cost-effectiveness of care provided by advanced practice professionals and cervical cancer disparities in Black and Hispanic women.
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