To the YSM Community,
It gives us great pleasure to announce the appointment of James Van Rhee, M.S., PA-C, as director of the Physician Associate Program and a member of the Department of Internal Medicine faculty.
Mr. Van Rhee has an impressive track record as a clinician, educator, and scholar. He began his career as a physician assistant (PA) in 1989 at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, moving to Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, Mich., the following year. In 1996, he joined the new Physician Assistant Program at Grand Valley State University as its first academic coordinator; he later headed the Physician Assistant Program at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. He was named the first chair of the Department of Physician Assistant Studies at Wake Forest University in 2006, and he became the founding program director for a new Physician Assistant Program at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in 2009. During his academic career Mr. Van Rhee has maintained an active clinical presence, working in internal medicine and oncology.
Mr. Van Rhee has served as project director for the PACKRAT (Physician Assistant Clinical Knowledge and Rating Assessment Tool) exam for 10 years, has been an ARC-PA (Accreditation Review Commission on Physician Assistant Education) site visitor for over 10 years, and he currently serves as chair of the commission. For 16 years, Mr. Van Rhee has been the course director for a national PA board review course, and he is the author of Physician Assistant Board Review: Certification and Recertification, published by Elsevier.
He has authored numerous articles on PA education and problem-based learning and has presented at both the national and local levels on a variety of clinical and educational topics. In 1999, Mr. Van Rhee was awarded a six-year Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) training grant to evaluate the use of problem-based learning in PA education. In 2007, he served as co-principal investigator on a three-year HRSA training grant to develop a health literacy curriculum for PA students.
Mr. Van Rhee earned his B.S. degree in medical technology at Grand Valley State University, and after several years working in the laboratory, he attended the University of Iowa Physician Assistant Program. In 1998, he earned an M.S. degree in Physician Assistant Practice from Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in North Chicago, Ill.
On behalf of the school, we extend thanks to David Brissette, MMSc, PA-C, who has served admirably as interim program director of the Physician Associate Program during the search process.
Please join us in welcoming James Van Rhee to Yale.
Sincerely,
Robert J. Alpern, M.D.
Dean
Ensign Professor of Medicine
Richard Belitsky, M.D.
Deputy Dean for Education
Harold W. Jockers Associate Professor of Medical Education and Associate Professor of Psychiatry