Health Care Experience and PA School
Updated: 06/08/2016
Whether you’re new to learning about physician assistants, you’re still not sure if PA is right for you, or you know that you want to go into the medical field, health care experience can be a tricky business. Many application systems out there require you to fill in your experience in a very technical, monotonous way. The CASPA (Central Application Service for Physician Assistants), AMCAS (American Medical College Application Service) and TMDSAS (Texas Medical and Dental Schools Application Service) are the most well-known. So you’re probably wondering what type of health care experience (HCE) you’ll need? Yes, the abbreviation “HCE” stands for health care experience, and you’ll see many students and PAs using it a lot when they talk about admissions requirements. I’ll talk about the different types of experience below and then list a few types under each. Just as a tip, always ensure that your “training” for any profession you list below is not counted in your hours of experience, as schools will not accept any training hours as HCE.
Patient Care Experience
This is experience in which you are directly involved in the patient’s care.
