James Van Rhee, DMSC, PA-C

Biography

James A. Van Rhee, DMSC, PA-C, is a graduate of Grand Valley State University in 1982 with a BS in Medical Technology and completed his PA education at the University of Iowa in 1989.  In 1997 received a Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies from Rosalind Franklin University. In 2023 he received his DMSc degree from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. 

Mr. Van Rhee has been involved in physician assistant education for over 20 years. He was Department Chair and Program Director of the Department of Physician Assistant Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Then Department Chair and Program Director of the Department of Physician Assistant Studies at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He was the founding Program Director at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. In 2013, he became the program director for the Yale School of Medicine Physician Associate program, and in 2016 became the founding program director for the Yale School of Medicine Physician Assistant Online Program. He joined Touro University in 2023 as Chair of Assessment and Remediation.

He has a long history of service to the PA profession.  He served for ten years as project director and test item writer for the Physician Assistant Education Association’s (PAEA) Physician Assistant Clinical Knowledge Rating Assessment Tool (PACKRAT). He was an ARC-PA site visitor for 16 years and served on the commission for nine years. For two years, he was the vice-chair of the ARC-PA commission and served two years as chair. For 17 years, he has been the course director for the Kaplan Medical PANCE/PANRE board review course. He is the author of the Physician Assistant Certification and Recertification Board Review Book published by Elsevier/Saunders and was the founding consulting editor for Physician Assistant Clinics. He was the lead editor for the PA clinical medicine textbook Clinical Medicine for Physician Assistants. He has authored several articles and is a common presenter at the local, state, and national levels on several clinical medicine and education topics. His educational interests include problem-based learning, online education, the use of technology in education, and curriculum development and assessment.