OJ the PA

I just finished what I'm lovingly calling "Hell Week."  Monday: PAEA Emergency Medicine Exam and Pediatrics Exam (2 hours a piece) Tuesday: End of Rotation OSCE exam Wednesday: study day Thursday: End of Curriculum OSCEs - this included a technical skills test on suturing, two small exams regarding diagnostics, an OSCE and a patient education OSCE Friday: End of Curriculum PAEA Exam (five. hours. long.)  By the end of the week, I was wiped out. I think I had a glass of wine (or two) while I watched Ozark Friday night. It's a bit of a blur, haha.  I know that I passed my End of Rotation stuff, because I needed to pass before I could take my End of Curriculum exams. But sadly, I won't know the results of those exams until this week Friday. Keep your fingers crossed for me! And while it feels like I'm done, now that those exams are over, it's not over yet. I am starting my last two rotations -- I'll be doing three weeks in orthopedic urgent care and then ...

During PA school clinical year, you learn a lot of things. And one of those things is the many different ways in which you can be exhausted. Mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually ... and many other ways that I can't currently articulate because, you know, I'm tired. 😅 I was a little bit worried about making a decision about a job before I had even tried emergency medicine. I had been told before I even started PA school by a mentor that I would probably end up in emergency. And I could see why -- I like wounds, excitement, drama, stress, action. Sounds right up my alley!  I want to start by saying I think I probably learned the most on this rotation. I had great preceptors (yes, even the guy who almost made me cry was a good teacher), felt like I was building on a solid foundation from my previous rotations, and had the chance to see a wide variety of diagnoses. From STIs to broken bones, head lacs to gunshot wounds (including one with a retained bullet in the rectum)...

Time flies when you're doing your clinical rotations and everything that isn't absolutely mandatory goes to the wayside. I've been MIA for a few months from this blog, but alas, that's life as a PA student. Let's get caught up, shall we? When I had been thinking about my future job, I wanted to end up in some “sexy” specialty like ICU or surgery (assuming I wasn’t the type to pass out in the OR, which luckily, I wasn’t!). Family medicine had always been at the bottom of my interest list. I went into this rotation thinking, “let’s just get this over with.” Boy, was I wrong about what I thought family medicine was! I get to build relationships. I can do procedures like toenail removal and cyst removal. I even helped with a few vasectomies! I get to see adorable little babies. I get to know what actually happens in the long run with my patients (rather than discharge and disappear). And best of all, I am challenged daily. The breadth of things I need to know to care fo...

When I decided to go back to school to be a physician assistant, internal medicine is what I had in my mind. As a clinical dietitian, I had the chance to collaborate with APPs and loved the idea of being able to provide that kind of care to patients. One of the APPs who I had the chance to work with often while I was a dietitian became my preceptor for this rotation! It was very cool to be standing in the exact spot I had imagined back then.  Back then, though, I did not appreciate just how challenging this job would be! I worked with a small private practice group that has privileges at various area hospitals, and my preceptor and I were based at one large metro-area hospital. The service was crazy busy the entire time I was there, and that was both good and bad. I got to see a ton of different diagnoses, a wide variety of patients, and was challenged to be relatively independent. But dang, it was hard to keep up most of the time. Honestly, I worked more and was more exhausted dur...

Another one bites the dust! It's crazy to me that another rotation (and therefore all of my surgery experience) has come to an end.  If I want to be one thing, it's totally honest. This rotation was challenging . I had a ton of fun during orthopedics -- I felt like a lot of providers and residents wanted to show off how great their subspecialties were. And they succeeded! But I didn't get pimped very much and I wasn't seeing patients independently.  That all changed in a big way when I went to general surgery. Did I learn a lot because of this? Absolutely. Did I feel like an absolute pile of garbage most days because I felt like I couldn't do or answer a damn thing right? Yes. Did I talk to my classmates and get some reassurance that many rotations feel like this? Also yes. Thanks for making me feel less alone, guys. The days were long and the list of things to study was even longer. But here we are, one rotation down. We've survived, so far at least! One big t...

And just like that, four weeks of orthopedic surgery have already come to an end! Time for a little (okay, long) recap, shall we? Overall, I sincerely enjoyed my orthopedic surgery rotation. My primary preceptor works in Total Joint, which is where I spent my first week. To make sure I got a nice, broad view of ortho surgery, she asked me to rank my preferences for eight different areas, and then got me set up with my top choices, spending one week in each.  Total Joint I don't think a ton of people can say that on their very first day of PA clinical rotations they got handed a bone saw! I got to cut through the patient's tibia to make the flat surface for the knee joint. I was literally vibrating with excitement as I handed back the bone saw. So cool.  Pro tip #1 : Don't forget your shoes at home for your first day! Yup, this girl totally forgot her tennis shoes at home and had to do an entire day in my Toms slip-ons. Luckily I had blue shoe covers on, so no one except my ...

I'm back! No better time than the transition between didactic and clinical year to resurrect the blog, am I right? Let's do a quick look back on didactic year and talk about what's ahead.  Review of Didactic Year As a reminder, I was a distance education student, so unlike most PA students who complete didactic over one year, I did it over two years and completed most of it from my home community. Because I was "part-time" I was able to work and even started a new job during my didactic period (probably wouldn't recommend that...). I worked 24 hours per week during my first year (because the job was new and quite challenging, and I was doing the "Big 3") and then increased to 32 hours during my second year (because, hi, money is nice and I felt more comfortable stretching myself a little thinner, haha).  I've written in the past about how I studied in PA school , so I won't repeat that here. Instead, I will say this: doing PA school part time...