The Effect of a Wellness Curriculum on First Semester JMU PA Students
Faculty Advisor Name
Dr. Massey
Department
Department of Health Professions
Description
Physician Assistant (PA) programs are rigorous graduate-level medical programs that achieve a Masters degree but complete an equal amount of credits as a Doctorate degree. They are notorious for causing high levels of stress leading up to and in the beginning of the program. While this is a well-known fact discussed between students and incoming students, it is an under-researched topic. Because of this, the faculty and students at JMU decided to implement a wellness curriculum to attempt to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms in 1st semester PA students and then analyze the effects. The curriculum consists of matching first years with a second year buddy, activities, four transition seminars, small group discussion, and increased faculty advisor involvement. The analysis of the effect of the curriculum is done using a pre- and post-test online survey. The aspects of the survey used to address the research question are “feeling, nervous, anxious or on edge”, “unable to stop or control worrying”, “feeling down, depressed or hopeless” and “feeling little interest or pleasure doing things”. These answers are then compared to student’s feelings of importance about the topics of burnout, mindfulness, and stress reduction needing to be addressed in PA programs. After completing the analysis, the data shows that the wellness curriculum is not successful in reducing stress, anxiety and depression symptoms in 1st semester PA students. The extreme stress of PA school can create challenges in evaluating quantitative results, however qualitative comments from 1st semester PA students report helpfulness from some aspects of the wellness curriculum. Overall, adjustments to the survey and potentially the wellness curriculum itself need to be made in order to see benefit from the program. In addition, more years of accurately collected data are needed to evaluate the success of a wellness curriculum.
The Effect of a Wellness Curriculum on First Semester JMU PA Students
Physician Assistant (PA) programs are rigorous graduate-level medical programs that achieve a Masters degree but complete an equal amount of credits as a Doctorate degree. They are notorious for causing high levels of stress leading up to and in the beginning of the program. While this is a well-known fact discussed between students and incoming students, it is an under-researched topic. Because of this, the faculty and students at JMU decided to implement a wellness curriculum to attempt to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms in 1st semester PA students and then analyze the effects. The curriculum consists of matching first years with a second year buddy, activities, four transition seminars, small group discussion, and increased faculty advisor involvement. The analysis of the effect of the curriculum is done using a pre- and post-test online survey. The aspects of the survey used to address the research question are “feeling, nervous, anxious or on edge”, “unable to stop or control worrying”, “feeling down, depressed or hopeless” and “feeling little interest or pleasure doing things”. These answers are then compared to student’s feelings of importance about the topics of burnout, mindfulness, and stress reduction needing to be addressed in PA programs. After completing the analysis, the data shows that the wellness curriculum is not successful in reducing stress, anxiety and depression symptoms in 1st semester PA students. The extreme stress of PA school can create challenges in evaluating quantitative results, however qualitative comments from 1st semester PA students report helpfulness from some aspects of the wellness curriculum. Overall, adjustments to the survey and potentially the wellness curriculum itself need to be made in order to see benefit from the program. In addition, more years of accurately collected data are needed to evaluate the success of a wellness curriculum.
