ACCREDITATION PEARLS
Preparing for an ARC-PA
Accreditation Visit
Preparing for a site visit from the
Accreditation Review Commission on
Education for the Physician Assistant
(ARC-PA) can be a stressful experience and faculty often talk about the
dreaded visit with a kind of gallows
humor. But preparing for a visit is
always a valuable process of review
and self-reflection, one that often
brings forth new ideas from unexpected sources. It can even be fun!
Following are the collected pearls of
four experienced PA educators:
Diana Easton, King’s College PA
Program; James Hammond, James
Madison University PA Program;
Kimberly Meyer, Louisiana State
University Health Sciences Center PA
Program; and Kathleen Roche, Pace
University-Lenox Hill Hospital PA
Program.
Keep the Big Picture in Focus
• Accreditation is about evaluating
the program. It is not an evaluation of the performance of the
administrators, faculty, staff, or
students. Don’t make it personal.
It isn’t.
dents, the preparation should be
quite simple: Just write it all
down. Your program’s site visit is
still likely to be stressful, but it will
also be rewarding, creative, and
yes—maybe even fun!
Plan Ahead
• Remember that timing is everything:
a. Pick dates for the visit when you
expect key people—full- and parttime faculty, staff, administrators,
and students—to be available and
not pressed with other matters.
b. Keep in mind as you choose
dates that it is helpful to the program and to the team if the students are not “newly arrived” in
their current positions, that is,
new to the program or to the clinical year.
c. Don’t schedule the visit close to
the program’s other big projects or
events, such as annual reports,
graduation, orientation for new
students, etc.
d. Don’t schedule student exams
immediately before, during, or
after the visit.
• Of the three evaluation stages
(program, site visit team, ARC-PA
commissioners) the most complete
and knowledgeable is the first—
that done by the program through
its self-study process and report.
The program sets the stage for all
levels of review.
• Review the application and selfstudy report requirements and
make a list of all the materials,
data, meetings, document reviews,
etc, that you will need.
• The evaluations by the site visitors
and the ARC-PA should not discover anything that the program
hasn’t first addressed in the application and self-study report.
• Develop a timeline that begins
slowly but builds as you get closer
to the deadline for submission of
the application and self-study
report.
• If a program provides day-to-day
educational excellence to the stu-
• Assign people and deadlines to
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Feature Editor’s Note:
This column does not focus on specific
accreditation standards, but rather on
the process of preparing for an ARC-PA
site visit. Four contributors who have
been involved in such visits share their
pearls for preparing for them. The ARCPA has sponsored presentations showing how to organize documents for the
site visit, and it provides guidance to
the program director in the protocol for
preparing for site visits. Materials related to these topics can be found on the
ARC-PA Web site at www.arc-pa.org/
Acc_Info/acc_cont_applicandforms.htm.
Disclaimer: This column is provided
strictly as an informational resource for
PA programs. Adherence to any suggestions from authors or editors of the column is completely voluntary and does
not ensure compliance with any accreditation standard(s). The suggestions provided in the column should not be considered inclusive of all proper methods
and procedures for obtaining a successful accreditation outcome. Program
directors and faculty should apply their
own professional skills and experience
to determine the propriety of any
specific method or procedure.
— Laura J. Stuetzer, PA-C, MS
Authors desiring to contribute to
Accreditation Pearls should forward
submissions to:
Laura Stuetzer, PA-C, MS
Saint Louis University
Email: laurajunest@hotmail.com
Telephone: 314-962-7156
2006 Vol 17 No 3 | The Journal of Physician Assistant Education
Preparing for an ARC-PA Accreditation Visit
tasks. Getting all the key people
involved may or may not reduce
the program director’s workload,
but it will generate a stronger
sense of ownership in others,
which will pay off during the visit
as they project both knowledge of
the details, as well as ownership
and accountability, to the site visit
team.
• Keep everyone informed. The
first meeting I hold with my faculty and staff to begin the process of
preparing for our visit (usually 18
months before the visit) involves
distributing reading material thick
enough to rival War and Peace. The
materials include the ARC-PA
Standards, the accreditation application, self-study report guidelines, and the site visit schedule
template, among others. New faculty members who have never been
involved in a site visit quickly
become confused, anxious, and
overwhelmed. The more experienced among us reassure them that
although the site visit preparation
can be arduous, we have been successful in the past and are committed to ensuring the same success
for the upcoming visit.
• Create a timeline that contains
every step of the process, counting
down to the application deadline,
the self-study report, and the date
of the site visit. We identify and
create a checkbox for each element
of the self-study and each standard
we need to document.
• Identify program strengths and
weaknesses. We try to conduct an
honest assessment of potential
citations related to the Standards
9-12 months in advance of the
visit so there is time to institute
changes and remediate deficiencies
before the visit.
• Review and, if necessary, revise the
The Journal of Physician Assistant Education | 2006 Vol 17 No 3
program’s mission statement. The
comprehensive review of the
Standards that programs do in
preparing for a visit may excite (or
motivate) us to include new goals
within our mission.
• Assign individuals to chair teams
that focus on the administrative,
didactic, and clinical components
of the Standards. The chairs are
responsible for holding weekly
meetings and providing the program director with the first draft
of the application and parts of the
self-study report.
• Don’t forget the documentation!
Keep records of all faculty meetings and of the actions taken to
improve the program. These
should be housed in one place so
that it is easy to access them.
Review the forms that you have in
place. Do they actually document
that you are meeting the Standards? Do you consistently document the same information for all
students? As an example, your
students counsel patients and their
family members on clinical rotations, and they provide the
patients with patient education.
How well are students doing these
tasks at the rotation sites? Is this
documented on your site or in
student evaluation forms?
• Be organized and start to use databases consistently. Once you start a
database and add to it throughout
the years, it is easier to analyze the
data at any point in time. Site visitors may ask, “How many students
have failed a course over the years,
and what was done to address the
situation?” or “Did the next year
show an improvement in the failure rates?” Having a well conceived and up-to-date database
will help you answer questions like
these.
Let the Standards Guide You
• Be sure everyone involved has a
copy of the Standards. Be sure that
all key faculty and staff also have a
copy or know how to access the
Accreditation Manual (both of
these documents are available on
the ARC-PA Web site.)
• Pick a “pet project.” Select a section of the Standards that you will
review once a semester with your
faculty and perhaps others from
outside your program—past students, preceptors, members of the
medical community. They may
give a different perspective of what
is actually being done.
• Consider using a set of notebooks
that are indexed and labeled to
correlate with the Standards, as
one of our programs does. Each
set of notebooks represents a different section of the Standards and
each tab within a notebook is a
different standard. (Notebooks
with a different color of paper for
each section are great for the
obsessive compulsives among us!)
The first page of each tabbed standard includes the exact wording of
the standard and the excerpt from
the self-study report requirements
that addresses that standard.
Following are all of the lecture
notes, objectives, exam questions,
catalog pages, policies, or other
documents that support what is
written in that excerpt of the selfstudy. Collecting this documentation will often lead to the discovery of other sources that support
our demonstration of compliance
in meeting a specific standard. A
visual review of the sections of
each notebook helps us note areas
lacking supporting documentation.
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Preparing for an ARC-PA Accreditation Visit
Plan the Self Study Process and
Document
• Keep a positive attitude. The selfstudy report should not be viewed
as a process by which writing creatively will cover up deficiencies,
but as a way of making improvements. No program is perfect.
Finding deficiencies in your program as you prepare and having a
plan of action can be an eye-opening and rewarding experience. Be
proactive, not reactive.
• Consider the self-study as a positive experience, even though it
may not always feel that way. The
program gets the first and most
in-depth crack at evaluating itself.
The self-study report should be
candid and balanced. It is all right
to state strengths, as well as to
expose areas that need improvement. Although it may be tempting to broaden the self-study
process to include areas beyond
the accreditation Standards, confine the self-study report to the
Standards alone.
• Realize that the self-study process
is not a process that should only be
looked at the year before your program is scheduled for an accreditation visit. This is an on-going
process. So have all faculty read or
reread the Standards. This should
not be a one-person assignment.
The more eyes that you have looking at the Standards, the more
views you will have on how they
are interpreted. One faculty member may breeze by a particular section thinking, “Yes, we do this.”
Another faculty member may say,
“We do this, but not well.” Faculty
often have ideas on how to
improve on what has been done in
the same manner for a number of
years.
• Invite faculty and staff to participate in the self-study process. This
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is an excellent way to orient them
to aspects of the program of which
they might otherwise have little
knowledge or appreciation.
• Divide and conquer. Have each
faculty member be responsible for
data collection and for authoring
different sections of the Standards
for the self-study report. This will
also promote ownership. Then ask
that one person be responsible for
final compilation of the report;
often this will be the program
director.
• Discuss one standard at each of
your program’s weekly faculty
meetings throughout the year to
make the self-study a continuous
process. In one of our programs,
each faculty member brings his
course documentation for that
standard to be compiled into the
notebooks system we use.
Everyone reviews and discusses the
documentation. Objectives and
expected competencies are added
as needed to existing courses or
lectures to strengthen our documentation in support of the standard being discussed. This process
spreads out the volume of work
into smaller and more manageable
components over the year.
Weekly review of a standard
requires about 20 minutes of the
faculty meeting time and is considered time well spent. Current
and new faculty members always
have access to these notebooks,
which are typically up to date.
When the site visitors arrive, the
series of notebooks is placed on a
bookshelf for them to review section by section. They have no need
to search computer databases or
endless course notebooks to find
the information they need. One
key to a successful site visit is making sure the site visitors don’t have
to hunt for what they need.
• Review and edit the application
and the self-study report continually and share the report with
external reviewers. This helps
determine which portions of the
draft still need attention and helps
faculty and staff to identify key
problem areas as they generate a
revised draft.
Pay Attention to the Details
• Review the ARC-PA Web site for
requirements, suggestions, and
news. The ARC-PA always posts
the materials from its workshops
and conference sessions. Call the
ARC-PA if you have questions.
• Reconfirm the schedule for the
visit with all the people involved
before you submit it to the ARCPA. Remind those included on the
schedule a week or two before the
visit. Be prepared for a few last
minute changes, especially by preceptors, alumni, and university
administrators. They are busy people. The visit may be paramount
on your calendar, but it is probably not on theirs. Last minute
changes are inevitable. Have a
backup plan that you can implement, if needed.
• Clear the schedule of the program
director, medical director, and
other core faculty as much as possible during the days immediately
before and during the visit. This
will allow time to deal with the one
or two things that will go wrong at
the worst time. Yes, Murphy’s Law
will be in effect for your visit, and
a few things will go wrong at the
worst possible time.
• Prepare core faculty, staff, students, and other key personnel,
especially those who have never
been through a visit, a week or two
before the visit. Faculty, students,
2006 Vol 17 No 3 | The Journal of Physician Assistant Education
Preparing for an ARC-PA Accreditation Visit
alumni, employers, etc, should
answer questions candidly, directly, and honestly, but they should
only provide the information that
is requested. If they are asked a
question to which they do not
know the answer, they should not
guess or speculate. They should
refer the questioner to someone
who may know the answer or to
the program director. They should
not open areas of inquiry that the
team does not seek. The team is
not there to evaluate individual
personnel and does not care about
personnel squabbles.
• Trust your ambassadors. Do not
fret about what students may say.
We all have students. Team members understand the stresses that
students experience. (Experienced
site visitors do not recall a single
instance when students were inappropriate or expressed a “negative
agenda” when meeting with the
site visitors.) Generally, students
behave very professionally when
speaking with site visitors.
• Remember that the team must
submit to the ARC-PA a list of
virtually everyone they meet during the visit along with each person’s function in the program. It is
very helpful if the printed sched-
The Journal of Physician Assistant Education | 2006 Vol 17 No 3
ule contains not only names, but
functions. The ARC-PA has an
example of such a schedule on its
Web site at www.ARC-PA.org.
• Provide name tags or tents. The
team will meet a great many people
in a short amount of time.
Roll With the Punches
• Accreditation site visits require a
tremendous amount of preparation to ensure a smooth review.
Even in programs with a welldesigned, ongoing, self-analysis
process in place, additional preparation is needed prior to a visit.
And no matter how prepared you
may feel, Murphy’s Law can come
into play at any time. At one of
our programs, major faculty
turnover occurred 6 months prior
to an ARC-PA site visit. This
resulted in existing faculty having
to assume new roles as program
director and clinical coordinator.
A new academic coordinator with
no teaching experience joined the
faculty to fill a vacancy. The program lacked resources for providing faculty members with information about how the program was
meeting each standard. Having
lived through these changes, the
program has now developed a
process for continuous self-study,
which yields searchable concrete
documentation.
Reflect Back
• Celebrate. The departure of the
site team should be followed
quickly by a program celebration.
Regardless of how well or poorly
you think it went, everyone
worked hard. Acknowledge it.
• Validate the process. When faculty
are focusing so intently on the site
visit, it is easy to lose sight of why
we are doing all of this in the first
place, which is to ensure that we
offer outstanding instruction and
guidance to our students.
Preparing for a site visit can be a
full-time job in itself. We often ask
ourselves if the actual process of
the visit gets in the way of teaching
students and maintaining our
commitment to program excellence. It’s not until after the site
visit that at least one of us is able
to stand back and say, “Yes, this
process is well worth the effort.”
The self-study, application, and
site visit certainly validates and
reminds us just how hard we work
to produce a quality educational
program. It serves to reinforce
that what we do every day matters
to both the students and to the
administration.
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