Webinar: Healthcare and Patient Care Experience for PA School (HCE vs. PCE)

Patient care experience means you were directly responsible for a patient’s care — providing hands-on treatment, performing tasks, or making decisions about that care. Healthcare experience means you worked in a healthcare setting without being directly responsible for the patient’s care, such as administrative, scribing, or transport roles. CASPA separates these into different categories and many programs set minimums for patient care experience specifically. [VERIFY] Confirm the current CASPA definitions, as the wording has been revised over the years.

It varies enormously by program. Some have no formal minimum, some require 500 hours, and others require 2,000 or more. Competitive applicants often land well above the stated minimum for their target programs. Rather than chasing a single number, build a list of the programs you actually intend to apply to and work to the highest requirement among them. [VERIFY] Check each program’s current published minimum, since these change frequently.

Usually not. Most programs classify scribing as healthcare experience rather than patient care experience because a scribe documents care rather than delivering it. A minority of programs will accept it as patient care experience, and some will count it partially. Scribing is still genuinely valuable for learning clinical reasoning and terminology, but do not rely on it to meet a patient care minimum. [VERIFY] Confirm how each of your target programs classifies scribing before you count on those hours.

Commonly accepted roles include certified nursing assistant, medical assistant, emergency medical technician, paramedic, patient care technician, phlebotomist, respiratory therapist, physical therapy aide, and registered nurse, among others. What matters is the actual hands-on responsibility of the role rather than the job title, so be prepared to describe your specific duties. [VERIFY] Verify against each program’s published list, as classifications differ between schools.

Keep a spreadsheet from the very beginning of each role with the employer, your supervisor’s name and current contact information, exact start and end dates, and hours worked. CASPA requires supervisor contact details for each entry, and reconstructing this information years later is one of the most common causes of last-minute application delays. Update it monthly rather than trying to recall it at submission time.

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