Ryan Hunton, DHSc, PA-C, is an Assistant Professor for the UK Department of Physician Assistant Studies and the Program Director for the Academic Residency Program. He received a Doctor of Health Sciences degree from A.T. Still University in 2023 and completed an Advanced Practice Provider residency in the UK Department of Emergency Medicine in 2018. He has a Certificate of Added Qualifications in Emergency Medicine (CAQ-EM) and is a Certified Health Simulation Educator (CHSE).

Dr. Hunton's service over the last decade has included clinical, military, and academic roles. Clinically, he has worked in emergency medicine at Frankfort Regional Medical Center and as a volunteer clinician at the Refuge Clinic in Lexington. He continues to serve as a medical officer in the Kentucky Army National Guard and served as a medical provider in Poland for three years. While in Poland, Ryan also taught emergency medicine in the simulation center at the Poznan University of Medical Sciences.

In his academic role, Dr. Hunton currently serves as a course director for the Intro to Health and Disease (Pathophysiology) and the Internal Medicine Clerkship courses. He is passionate about integrating case-based and experiential learning methods like simulation into the pre-clinical curriculum and he leads the College's Simulation Task Force. Through his residency Program Director role, he builds and refines post-graduate clinical education opportunities for advanced practice providers through collaborative relationships with academic and community hospital partners.

Recent publications include original research defining and measuring benchmarks for differential diagnosis performance in learners, experienced clinicians, and large language models. Other research interests include outcomes of pre-clinical simulation training, outcomes and effectiveness of advanced practice provider clinical post-graduate training, and patient- and community-related factors associated with emergency department bouncebacks. His research has been presented at regional, national, and international venues.

Scholars@UK: https://scholars.uky.edu/en/persons/ryan-hunton