Now that the fall semester has begun and my motivational wheels have officially fallen off its a good time for an update.
Our program, like most PA Programs have separated the class work from the clinical rotations. This is done by bombarding the students in their first year of the program with all of the class work and lecture that is required. This makes the first year really challenging and places the focus on understanding and making sure that the students are on par academically with the applications that they submitted.
I would give anything to be taking 4 classes a semester. Currently we are taking 6 full semester classes 3 of which have labs. At any given time this semester we are enrolled in Medicine classes that can last anywhere from 3-12 weeks depending on the subject matter. So it is quite hectic at the moment as we are juggling 10 classes for the next 4 weeks. The days are long but if you have the patients to sit and love to learn, this is about as close to heaven as you can get. Guest lecturers are common place and specialists in more remote areas of medicine are pleased to travel and lecture for a week or so at a time.
Before applying to PA Programs I did a fair share of shadowing and got the chance to ask my favorite female PA “How was the PA Program that you went to?” the most devastating response came from a female PA who stated: ”Its medical school on steroids, make sure you take at least 1 hour a day to do something for you” . I remember trying not to sweat just having realized that the two years of my life that I was very much looking forward to…….WAS GOING TO SUCK?
It’s true. Its not all that fun on a day to day basis, the days are long and the material is vast. What needs to be kept in mind is that you are not enrolled in a PA Program to meet people, lean about yourself or travel to distant countries. You are here in this very specialized program to prepare you for a career in doing things for others.
You have be applied and you are thrilled to have been chosen to give up 2+ years of your life to learn from the best about the very detailed world of medicine and the responsibility that goes along with it. You are enrolled in a Graduate Level program where people no longer wear sweat pants and hoodies to class. You are instantly an active member in your school’s surrounding community. You will participate in the seasonal flu shots, read in local schools, thump the pavement for anti-smoking campaigns, give presentations to undergrads, speak at city council meetings and become a member of the AAPA.
You become a target for questioning. Everyone that walks, talks and goes to the grocery store is human. Every human has at one time been sick or felt ill while dealing with a confusing set of symptoms. Just in passing you will be asked questions that might be way over your head or that might seem so blatantly obvious. You play the role of a health professional and explain in simple words what might have befallen the 62 y/o Male on the bread isle, and you make sure to include all possible forms of prevention.
Being a student in a PA program is as much about learning how to treat as it is learning how to prevent. I get just as excited about placing a chest tube late at night in an inner city ER as I do about teaching middle schoolers about the dangers of smoking. The more that I learn about disease, the more I wonder why we can’t show really deadly and gruesome pictures on television in an attempt to dissuade the use of tobacco and excessive alcohol consumption.
At 8 pm on ABC, NBC or CBS just about every one’s father is sitting down about to watch the evening hockey game. Every spouse is sitting near by wishing that he were sharing a pot of tea and not slugging the 1st of 3 beers over the next 2 hours. I have seen enough disturbing photos to make just about any lumberjack cry put down his beer.
People are not affected by statistics. The problem with advertising statistics is that numbers are not visual. You could paint a huge billboard with a greatly inflated statistic saying “98% of all people who smoke will die 20 years early than their spouse”. You can paint that board bright pink and hook up a 1/3 of all the neon lights from Vegas an no one is going to care. The funny thing about numbers that that they will represent whatever meaning you give to them. 98% should be a startling statistic for most people but 98.6 degrees is also the normal body temp, and 98 degrees was also the name of a famous group of “man-banders” at one time. 98 miles an hour is a dominant fastball, where 98 people on a 747 plane means its only 1/3 full. Numbers represent something else, its their job, they are a means of standardizing information that is being passed from person to person. The number 98 represents people dying, a photo of someone dead represents only itself. Flash all of the statistics you want, run all of the number-filled, anti-carcinogenic ads you want, but its never going to do much. A picture of a resected cadaver with its tar soaked lungs pulled out, sitting on an autopsy table with the face blacked out and just the words YOUR DAD or YOUR MOM written on its forehead might invoke some real response.
There is a reason that so many medical providers limit their drinking and smoking. We understand the devastation and commonly recognize the faces of guilt and genuine remorse when patients realize all too late in life that they were only killing themselves. We meet people that in a matter of hours realize the repercussions of their life-long behavior. We see families split by disease and children left without parents.
You don’t need two trains traveling in the same direction at 98 mph to cause anatomical devistation. Some of the most gruesome scenes you will see are within the bodies of those that die a silent death.
