Patient Care Experiences (PCE) vs. Health Care Experiences (HCE)

Patient Care Experiences (PCEs) are considered any jobs where you work directly with patients and get paid. People often ask if they can use something they did years ago and the answer is yes. Some programs may ask for your paystubs to verify the minimum hours required for the program (one of mine did), but most take your word for it. Most PA programs require minimum of 1000 PCEs, but average PA student has about 3000-6000. This is not to discourage you but use this as a motivating factor in deciding your PCE. All jobs will teach you something valuable and you will be able to transfer those skills to your PA studies and as a future PA. This is the biggest difference between medical school applicants and PA school applicants, because the programs are so rigorous, having a solid foundation of pre-requisite courses and great exposure of patient care allows us to relate to the material well. I personally enjoyed being an EMT and Clinical Research Technician because I learned to draw blood, think quick on my feet, do EKGs and that helps me correlate topics to real life experience currently as a PA student.


Health Care Experiences (HCEs) could be anything in the health, nutrition, exercise or medicine field that you volunteer in. These hours can be categorized under volunteer section or HCE depending on where you lack hours. These hours are usually unpaid where you don't work directly with patients.


The best advice I can give is be descriptive! Your title doesn’t say much, it’s more about how you word your job duties. Don’t just use your job description that’s given by your employer, but think about what you do on daily basis and use words like performed phlebotomy tasks, triaged patients etc. It may be confusing that Medical Assistants (MAs) are listed under PCE and Healthcare Experience (HCE) on CASPA, but it comes down to your duties. Back office MAs do more administration work than patient care. You can list it as a PCE or HCE on CASPA, but the school will make their own judgement on what it actually is considered as. Always make sure you check in with the program if you’re unsure!


My PCE Jobs:

  • Emergency Medical Technician (only this one required a license)

  • Clinical Research Technician

  • Behavioral Interventionist

  • Medical Scribe in the ER

  • Senior Health Educator (required MPH)


Here are some of the PCEs that you can explore: