Randy is a Physician Assistant with the Carilion Clinic as well as an Assistant Professor in the Physician’s Assistant program at Jefferson College of Health Sciences. Randy runs us through a typical shift at the clinic, from treating the common cold up to heart attacks. Although similar professions, physician assistants and doctors have slightly different academic tracks. His advice to students is to decide what they would like their life to look like after schooling, obtain high marks in the sciences, and to get as much hands-on work in the medical field before graduating.
Transcript
My name is Randy Howl. I am a physician assistant. I'm also faculty at Jefferson College of Health Sciences, in the PA program, and also on the interprofessional faculty for Virginia Tech School of Medicine. So PAs are licensed healthcare providers that practice medicine. We work in collaboration and with physicians. You'll hear different terms, like collaborating physicians, supervising physicians, so on and so forth. The real fact of the matter of the matter is that PAs, we have either a physician or a group of physicians that we work with as part of a team. I mean, it really is varied. I can see everything from a twisted ankle all the way up to a heart attack. I can see everything from an ear infection to someone that is in septic shock. I mean, it's a very broad spectrum of patients that we see. One of the things that I really am grateful for is that, working with the physicians and the nurses and the rest of the folks that are on our team, it really is a collaborative effort to make sure that we're giving the very best patient care that we can. It doesn't matter if it's a twisted ankle or if it's a heart attack, we take care of patients one at a time, and we try to do the right thing every single time. Let's say I'm going to work a seven to five shift on our trauma overflow pod. I'll show up at seven, I'll see who our attending physician is. At our facility, we have residents. We have lots of learners. We have resident physicians, we have med students, PA students, we have PA and NP fellows that are there. The first thing I would do is see who my team was for the day, and then look at the board, and see where we're at. How many patients are in the waiting room, which patients are where, the acuity level of the patients, and then we divvy up the work and we get to it. My particular circumstance is a little bit unique, because in addition to working clinically as a PA, my job, I split it into thirds. About a third of my job, I'm actually the director for the Emergency Medicine Fellowship for PAs and NPs at Carilion, so about a third of my week is toward that. About a third of my week is clinical work, actually working clinically, and then about a third of my week is teaching at the college and at the med school through the interprofessional program.
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