About
Patrick Donnelly is in his ninth year at AB and his eighteenth year in clinical practice as a Physician Assistant. He came to AB in 2017 after a decade in rural emergency medicine — primarily at the Pikeville Medical Center Emergency Department in eastern Kentucky and at the Davis Memorial Hospital ED here in Elkins, where he still works one weekend shift per month.
Donnelly holds an M.P.A.S. from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine PA Program (2007) and a B.S. in Biology from Marshall University. He is dual-certified by the NCCPA in Emergency Medicine and in General Practice, and is a Fellow of the Society of Emergency Medicine PAs (SEMPA).
At AB he is the course director for Clinical Medicine I and II (the core didactic-year sequence covering all body systems), and the program's simulation coordinator. He designed the AB MPAS Simulation Hospital curriculum from scratch in 2019 and has overseen its expansion to a 22,000 sq ft facility with high-fidelity manikins, a cadaver lab, and a standardized-patient suite.
Education
- 2007M.P.A.S., Master of Physician Assistant Studies — Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
- 2005B.S., Biology (minor in Chemistry) — Marshall University.
- —NCCPA Certifications: Emergency Medicine (CAQ-EM); General Practice.
Teaching
Donnelly teaches the central two-semester didactic sequence and runs the AB MPAS Simulation Hospital. He maintains an active clinical practice at the Davis Memorial Hospital ED.
- MPAS 510Clinical Medicine I: Cardiopulmonary & Renal Systems6-credit fall didactic course. Course director.
- MPAS 515Clinical Medicine II: GI, Endocrine, Hematology, ID6-credit spring didactic course. Course director.
- MPAS 580Simulation Hospital PracticumA semester-long lab-based course in the AB Simulation Hospital. High-fidelity scenario-based learning, three faculty preceptors per session.
Clinical Practice & Simulation Scholarship
Donnelly's scholarship focuses on simulation pedagogy for PA programs and on emergency-medicine PA practice in rural and critical-access settings. He is a member of the SEMPA Education Committee, a frequent CAATE / ARC-PA site visitor, and a regular contributor to JEMS and JAAPA.
He has led the AB MPAS Simulation Hospital project since its 2019 founding and is the program's lead developer of standardized-patient scenarios for the OSCE summative examination.
Selected Publications & Presentations
- 2024"The Single-Provider Rural ED: A Decision-Support Framework." JEMS, May.
- 2023"High-Fidelity Simulation in the Small PA Program." JAAPA.
- 2021Co-author, The PA Simulation Curriculum Field Guide. American Academy of PAs Press.
- 2025Workshop leader, SEMPA Annual Conference, "Designing Resuscitation Scenarios for PA Students."
Honors & Service
- 2024AB Faculty Award for Innovation in Teaching.
- 2022SEMPA Distinguished PA Educator.
- 2020NCCPA CAQ in Emergency Medicine.
- 2018AB MPAS Faculty of the Year (selected by graduating cohort).
I don't teach my students to be PAs who can handle the big trauma. I teach them to be PAs who can handle the big trauma alone, at 2:47 AM, in a critical-access hospital with no attending, no resident, and a 90-minute helicopter ETA. That's the AB difference.— Dr. Patrick S. Donnelly, PA-C
Beyond the Classroom
Donnelly lives in Philippi with his wife Aileen (a high-school chemistry teacher at Philip Barbour High) and their two teenage children. He is a volunteer firefighter and EMT with the Philippi Volunteer Fire Department, a position he has held since 2019.
A serious whitewater kayaker, he runs Class IV+ rapids on the Cheat River most weekends in spring; he has paddled every major Appalachian whitewater river south of the Mason-Dixon line.