Intro

hello, there. i am a physician assistant student and i finished my final exams of my academic year YESTERDAY so i am writing this in bed with a bit of a hangover. this is literally the first day i've been able to sleep in in several months....and i'm up and its not even 8:00am. awesome. i think PA school may have broken my head. :)

the last year was very intense. i had 5-6 classes/semester, which is madness in graduate school. the classes ranged from human anatomy with a cadaver lab (fascinating and so important for our understanding of the workings of the body...but every bit as unsettling as you're imagining right now), pathophysiology, research, pharmacology, howtobeanicepersonandnotkillpatientsonpurpose ethics and policy classes and then the nuts and bolts classes of clinical medicine, physical exam, and diagnostics. i'm in a great program w/ wonderful professors and i have amazing friends/peers alongside me. it's been good, but exhausting.

so a week from now i go into my rotations. they will last 12 months and will include all the major disciplines (surgery, ER, family practice, peds, OBGYN, internal medicine, psych and a few electives) all in 4-6 week stretches. this is like the internship year for medical students, except that since we will graduate at the end of our rotations year and get jobs and be responsible for human lives, instead of continue on for a few more years of residency, our preceptors treat us like 3rd/4th yr medical students. another difference betwixt us and the medical students is that we have no legal restrictions on our hours. you may recall legislation changes that determined that medical students are not allowed to work more than (something like) 80 hrs in a week and 30 hours in a stretch...with the hope that fewer students falling asleep while operating on their patients will result in few casualties and law suites. well, we PA students haven't quite gotten our lobbyists to pull that sweet deal for us...so we stay on after all the med students leave at night.

all i have going into this year is hearsay on what to expect. before starting the program last year i also read the books "The Intern Blues" by Robert Marion and "The House of God" by Samuel Shem, which i really enjoyed but also which gave me a sense of terror throughout this last year as i looked forward into my clinical year. most of my fellow students happily plodded along, just aching for the hard tests to be over, but i always kind of savored the classroom setting since the worst that can happen is you pick the wrong multiple choice answer or confidently announce to your professor and entire class that the 12 y/o kid w/ diarrhea most likely has colon cancer. in the safety of academia your misinterpreting lab values or inability to read an EKG only hurts your GPA, doesn't risk a life or cause a misdiagnosis or get you sued. that is my fear.

and yet i receive reassurances all around that we will have our hands held at first and will "remember more than you think you will" so i go forth with enthusiasm. i just really am hoping i won't be escorted out of my first rotation on the first day, tossed into the parking lot by angry red-coat wearing volunteer help desk old people saying, "you're the worst student we've ever had! did you sleep through the entire 12 months of classes? you are no longer invited into medicine." if that doesn't happen on my first day, i'll feel pretty good. :)

again, my purpose in this blog is to share my experiences and perceptions on my clinicals with my family and friends (who i won't see for long stretches of time, see above under Medical Students Have All the Luck) and for anyone else in PA school, considering PA school, or for those who are sadists and enjoy other people's woes.

hope you're having a pleasant friday....more soon.....