Fall 2012 Alumni Magazine - Lake Erie College

Other community supporters of the
new program include Dr. Jamie Landis
MD/PhD, department chair of biology
at Lakeland Community College, and
Rita McMahon, city manager for the
city of Painesville.
Lake Erie College’s location is proving
uniquely beneficial to the design of
a PA program. The concentration of
health care in Northeast Ohio – with the
Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals,
and Tri-Point Medical Center all
located in close proximity – provides
any student looking to go into the PA
field with a variety of career options.
Currently, however, the only PA program
in the area is the cooperative program
between Cuyahoga County Community
College (Tri-C) and Cleveland State.
“Baldwin-Wallace University is also
putting a PA program in place for next
summer,” Weber said. “Our program
is coming [in] Summer 2014. Now, out
of the three institutions [that] will be
covering NE Ohio, we are in the sweet
spot. Our students can go anywhere in
the country for clinical rotation, [and]
they will have many opportunities in
their own back yard.”
medicine, pharmacology and anatomy
& physiology, among others, before
continuing on to the clinical phase of the
program. During the second stage, they
will be going through clinical rotations
in area hospitals, participating in roughly
nine five-week rotations in various
clinical areas.
“The physician assistant field is
exciting,” Weber said. “From the first
day of class, students will be listening to
hearts and lungs, and learning how to
care for patients. The program will be
very hands-on from day one.”
The College expects to receive at least
300-500 applications for the 20 highly
sought-after spaces in the initial entering
class for Summer 2014. The typical
applicants will have a bachelor’s degree
in either pre-med, biology or chemistry,
but applicants from other disciplines will
be considered as well. Since acceptance
into the program will be extremely
competitive, a strong GPA is very
important, especially a strong science
GPA. Applicants will be required to
have at least 250 hours of shadowing a
medical doctor or a physician’s assistant
prior to applying to the program.
“The physician assistant
field is exciting,”
Weber said. “From
the first day of class,
students will be listening
to hearts and lungs, and
learning how to care for
patients. The program
will be very hands-on
from day one.”
Once established, the PA program will
take students through 27 months continuously,
beginning with four semesters
of didactic studies in the classroom.
The students will take courses in clinical
LAKE ERIE | FALL ‘12 7