Thurnes was honored with the prestigious in 2024, recognizing her exceptional commitment to fostering leadership and innovation in PA education. A long-time advocate for excellence in assessment, she has volunteered with PAEA’s End of Rotation and End of Curriculum exam development boards since 2013. These roles have involved shaping high-quality assessments that serve as critical benchmarks for PA students nationwide.

As the only national organization representing PA educational programs, PAEA supports over 300 member programs through resources like assessment tools, advocacy efforts, and professional development. Its Board of Directors is integral to advancing the organization’s mission, and Thurnes’ proven expertise will help guide strategic initiatives addressing diversity, equity and healthcare workforce challenges.

For more details about PAEA’s mission and the work of its Board of Directors, visit

Thurnes and Person presented “Better End-of-Life Conversations: A Mutually Beneficial Educational Experience” at the conference. The Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) conference is considered the premier educational, interdisciplinary global meeting for professionals working in the field of death, dying and bereavement: mental health professionals, social workers, counselors, educators, clergy, funeral directors, hospital and hospice personnel, and psychologists attend the conference annually.

The Physician Assistant Studies Program, Anatomical Gift Program and the Center for Design Thinking have worked together to organize and hold Crucial Conversations in Health Care for two years now. The interprofessional event includes second year PA students, practitioners in the field of death and dying, and voluntary local community members. The annual educational session provides skills to give voice and meaning to life’s most crucial conversations.

The premise for this work originated from Person’s close work with the community where she came to the realization that community members were often not prepared to have difficult conversations around death and dying with their families and their healthcare providers. As a professor in the PA program, Thurnes shared that students, providers, and communities often face a host of systemic challenges and an overall lack of training for engaging in these difficult conversations.

In collaboration with Danielle Lake, irector of Design Thinking, Thurnes and Person chose to use design thinking as the framework for the session to guide participants in a collaborative process that is used for generating and testing innovations to complex problems. Evaluations completed by students and community members provided supporting data that Crucial Conversations in Healthcare appropriated mutual and reciprocal learning with both students and community members feeling empowered and better prepared for fluent communication under challenging circumstances.

Based on these strong outcomes it was determined that Thurnes and Person have established a format for introducing difficult conversations across a variety of disciplines that the School of Health Sciences hopes to expand upon.

Assistant Professors Tracey Thurnes and Shaun Lynch collaborated on a podium and poster presentation surrounding the program’s case-based learning course, Advanced Clinical Reasoning. The interactive-focused discussion titled “Enhancing Student Learning and Strengthening Critical Thinking Through Technology” introduced ways to integrate technology in the classroom to strengthen critical thinking while engaging the learner. Their poster titled “PA Student Comfort Levels in Competency Acquisition” displayed that having a dedicated course for clinical reasoning, delivered through multimodal instruction grounded in active learning, improves PA students’ comfort level in competency acquisition for delivering evidence-based care.

Lynch also presented a session titled “Let’s Get Digital: Making the Most of PAEA Learning” with four fellow PAEA Learning Champions on how to engage with PAEA’s Digital Learning Hub and professional learning communities.

Assistant Professor Cindy Bennett delivered a workshop titled “Illustrative Anatomy: Teaching Dynamic Anatomy Using Anatomical Body Painting and Ultrasound.” The session provided participants with engaged-learning techniques and guidelines to conduct an effective educational illustrative anatomy session at their own institution.

Bennett also co-presented with Nita Skillman, director of the client and standardized patient program, on how Elon’s program created an interactive, experiential curriculum on transgender patient care. The presentation was titled “It Takes a Village: Creating Cultural Competence in Transgender Health Care Curricula.”

Bennett also had a research brief titled “Cultivating Empathy in the Anatomy Lab,” describing a qualitative data analysis by herself and an Elon student that found that when donor information is shared in the anatomy lab and the humanity of donors is highlighted, student anxiety decreases and student empathy and gratitude for the dissection experience increases over the duration of the course.

Associate Professor Antoinette Polito presented “Walking the Talk: Creating Space for Engaged LGBTQ+ Care.” The session focused on how to create an atmosphere of welcome and an environment of safety for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer patients.

Through curriculum infusion and workshops that partner with community organizations led by Assistant Professor Tracey Thurnes, Elon PA students have put into action design thinking to tackle healthcare issues before. When the opportunity to attend the thinc 3-day hackathon at Duke University School of Medicine, McDonald took advantage of the possibility to put these skills to use on a larger scale. 

“What surprised me the most about the event was that the problems and solutions proposed were as diverse as the group that assembled at Duke that weekend," McDonald said when asked about her experience. "Those who were spearheading the teams came from medical backgrounds, but also technical and business backgrounds as well, and they proposed ideas about everything from a tool to decode health insurance to a program to treat patients with dementia. By utilizing everyone’s unique strengths, we were able to build a semi-working prototype with a proposed business plan, and all in less than three days."

As a result of the hackathon, McDonald's group came up with “Healthtrackr,” a program to be used in conjunction with MyChart and other patient data software to help patients interpret their test results and make informed decisions about their health. While the Healthtrackr did not make the final cut in prototypes for the weekend, she said that the experience “gave all the team members a glimpse of what it really takes to turn an idea into a reality, as well as the value of working with a diverse team in pursuit of a solution to a problem.”

More information on the 2019 Triangle Health Innovation Challenge can be found at .

Elon’s Physician Assistant Studies curriculum allows for and encourages students to participate in the annual conference, which offers opportunities for networking and provides continuing medical education and professional development sessions. This year’s conference had approximately 6,600 attendees consisting of students, educators, and practicing providers from multiple disciplines.

Out of 94 teams, the Elon Student Challenge Bowl Team was one of 36 teams that made it to the big stage, a point of pride for Elon’s program. Team members were Morgan Bestenlehner, Laura Gardner, Brittany Hall-Potvin, Kevin Nguyen and Dylan Plocki. Second-year student Jacquelyn Visser served on the AAPA Student Academy Assembly of Representatives, continuing her work on legislation that was passed last fall on educating physician assistants on human trafficking.

Faculty presentations included:

Dr. Diane Duffy: “Shellfish, Peanuts, Gluten? Oh, My! What Do I Tell My Patients to Feed Their Infants?”

Assistant Professor Shaun Lynch: “Essentials of Occupational Medicine”

Associate Professor Melissa Murfin:

• “Geriatric Pharmacotherapy: Polypharmacy and the Beers Criteria”
• “Thyroid Nodules and Thyroid Cancer: What to Do When You Find Them”/
• “Pharmacogenetics 101: Preventing Medication Problems Before You Prescribe”

Assistant Professor Tracey Thurnes: “Management of Patients with Valvular Heart Disease: 2017 AHA/ACC Focused Update”

The will take place in Denver, Colorado.

The exploration was led by Tracey Thurnes, assistant professor in the Department of Physician Assistant Studies and Dawan Stanford, director of design thinking at ľĂľĂČČ. Dawan began the day with an introduction to design thinking and why it is a valuable process in the health sciences. The primary goals of design thinking experiences for students in the health sciences are to create multi-functional, high-impact medical teams that are made up of members with strong leadership abilities and to increase interprofessional educational experiences to make a sustainable impact on the local medical community.

Following the introduction, students explored a service map that was created through prior research and interviews with Thurnes and staff at the Open Door Clinic. The service maps detailed the processes within the clinic from a patient, volunteer, provider, and system-wide perspective. In small groups, students and Open door staff then had time to identify areas of confusion or perceived complications related to the process and their specific question.  

After the exploration, students provided as many ideas as possible to improve their system challenge.  They were encouraged to dream big and to have no constraints in their idea generation. Once a plethora of ideas were available, common themes were pinpointed and students used their service maps and a service ticket to express their prototypes for solutions.

The day concluded with students presenting their innovative solutions to the Open Door staff, and rich dialogue was had around each idea to improve triage and treatment adherence, ultimately hoping to improve patient outcomes. 

At the conclusion of the workshop, the students provided the Open Door staff with more than 70 ideas and possible solutions on service tickets and maps. Tracy Salisbury, executive director of the Alamance Open Door Clinic shared, “We are grateful to have the opportunity to collaborate with Elon PA students on this project. We definitely got some great ideas that we plan to explore and implement in the future.”

The Physician Assistant Studies program has a strong relationship with the Open Door Clinic, raising $17,000 this year in the 3rd Annual Great Cape Escape, and students regularly volunteer at the clinic during their academic year of the 27-month program.  

The session began with an Introduction from Elon School of Health Sciences Dean Becky Neiduski followed by a “Did you know?” presentation highlighting the top 10 things each profession wanted the others to know about their field of work. 

Following the presentation, a standardized patient scenario was presented featuring a patient who had undergone hip surgery and was struggling with pain management and an altered mental status. Small groups of nursing, PT, and PA students then had engaging conversations around the primary goals for the patient and how the team could best work together to meet the patient’s needs. 

Prior to and following the session, students from both PA and nursing rotated through activity stations hosted by DPT faculty and second-year DPT students to learn techniques for improving patient mobility and preventing workplace injuries.

• “Augmenting Reality in PA Education: Adding Layers to Course Material” by Melissa Murfin, PharmD, BCACP, PA-C
• “Getting ľĂľĂČČ “Seasoned” in Clinical Reasoning” by Tracey Thurnes, MPAS, PA-C and Shaun Lynch, MS, MMSc, PA-C
• “LGBT Health Education in PA Curricula” by Katherine Vornheder, PA-C, ’17 and Cynthia Bennett, MD
• “Research and Publishing Made Easier” by Patti Ragan, PhD, MPH, PA-C and JPAEA Editorial Advisory Board members
• “The PA Program Directors Council Experience” by Patti Ragan, PhD, MPH, PA-C and other North Carolina program directors
• “Quest for Yoda: Searching for Meaning Mentorship” by Shaun Lynch, MS, MMSc, PA-C and Jacqueline Sivahop, MS, PA-C

Close to 100 students participated in an hour-long session that was facilitated by faculty from the three programs that focused on the importance of the medical team. The session began with a “Did you know?” presentation that included the top 10 things that each profession wanted the others to know about their field of work.

Following the presentation, a standardized patient scenario was presented that included a patient who had had hip surgery two days prior, struggling with pain management and altered mental status. The scenario began with the nurse speaking with the patient and obtaining vital signs, followed by the physical therapist entering the room to begin physical therapy for the day. The patient’s vital signs and mental status were not conducive to ambulation, so a discussion had to occur between the Nurse, physical therapist and physician assistant, who entered later during morning rounds. That discussion focused on the most important concerns and primary goals for the patient and how the team could best work together to meet the patient’s needs. 

The session concluded with students sharing what they learned about the different professions that participated in the activity. One student commented that “each profession does have a certain job and role, but with good communication, goals can be modified to efficiently treat the patient effectively.”  Another mentioned that “we have a lot in common, especially when it comes to patient safety, comfort, and goals.”

Prior to and following the session, students from the physician assistant and nursing programs were divided into smaller groups that rotated through stations with physical therapy faculty and students to learn techniques to improve patient mobility and to prevent injuries from occurring.

The day was considered a success by all and is hoped to be an annual event.