On Friday, December 11, 2020 with the MSU PA Class of 2020, Kayla Walker celebrated two years of dedication and commitment to the pursuit of a Master of Science degree in Physician Assistant Studies. Her class faced a unique challenge in their clinical phase of education, due to the covid-19 pandemic, that resulted in a delay of their fourth clinical rotation. Kayla and her classmates were able to resume their delayed rotation in December 2020. With the educational finish line moved to the middle of January 2021, Kayla is ready to enter the PA profession. 

Hometown

My hometown is Marshfield, MO.

Colleges attended and degrees earned

I have previously attended Central Methodist University on a Golf scholarship then transferred to the University of Arkansas where I completed my Bachelor’s Degree in Biology.

Previous health care experience

My previous healthcare experience was as a Patient care associate (PCA) at Mercy Hospital Springfield on the neurology floor. I took care of patients who suffered strokes, MVA patients, among other neurodegenerative disorders. I’ve worked as a tech in the NICU, assisting nurses with the smallest patients and supporting their families. Finally, my last experience was as an Obstetrician assistant in Labor & Delivery where I managed many tasks from secretary work to assisting as part of the delivery team.

Why did you decide to become a PA?

I decided to become a PA because its who I’ve always been. I simply have taken the step to further my education in medicine. I want to help people in multiple areas of their lives but also foster an environment where education is never ending.

Describe your experience in the program.

MSU’s PA program is intense and feels never-ending. However, it has prepared me for multiple scenarios and given me the opportunity to find self-confidence. I felt most prepared to talk to patients, the diagnosing and treating comes with lots of practice and exposure. My biggest challenge in the program was time management. I had my first child 1 month into the program, so having an infant at home and trying to learn in PA school was nothing short of a challenge. It is still a battle today as I now have a toddler running around while I study for my board certification exam.

What do you like best about Missouri State’s PA program?

My favorite thing about MSU’s PA program is that the faculty treat you like family, firm but with care. They truly want to see students succeed and will go above and beyond to support us.

What is the best piece of advice you have received so far?

The best piece of advice I have is something that I received from a previous MSU PA student and that is: do something every day to achieve your goal, no matter how small. This helped so much when I was going on 3 years of preparation for my PA school application. I say this to myself daily especially when I am feeling unmotivated.

What specialty do you want to pursue?

I have no idea where I will end up working, I have spent the last year of clinical rotations “trying out” multiple areas of medicine and I can see myself in any situation.

By Tiffany Nuño, PA-C

I flew into the epicenter of the Covid –19 Pandemic as a new graduate Physician Assistant, frightened, excited to put my newfound knowledge to work, and anxious about the uncertainty I was about to be stepping into. I signed up with an emergency staffing company that advertised through social media, a recent MSU PA classmate of mine had posted it to our class page. I did not know much of the company, I called the phone number at the time they indicated until I got through the line and I verbally agreed to go to New York City for 21 days to assist with medical relief efforts. I gathered my things, nervously packed my bags full of textbooks I’d never use and flew out approximately 30 hours after that phone call; I returned home 94 days later.  I didn’t know it at the time, but I would be assigned to the Medical Intensive Care Unit at the designated Infectious Disease flagship hospital in the epicenter of the pandemic during the peak weeks of Covid-19 infection.

Since I’ve been home, I’ve been asked to account for my time in New York by nearly every person that has contacted me. Before I left, I remember talking to my physicians team about what to say when this happened. I reviewed with them the take-home points to know about Covid-19 and the pandemic. I thought I was prepared to answer these questions. I even studied for it like any good student of medicine does, but when I got home and that first opening question was presented, “what was that like?” I felt my preparation stumble and fall down around me in shambles. It seemed like it would be easy to conceptualize the medicine, and verbal academic response I had prepared, but the first reaction is never an organized cognizant presentation, it’s a visceral emotional response. We enter the field of medicine to help heal patients, and in that process, we bond with them as people. It can be devastating to lose a patient, especially in the volumes that we lost to Covid-19. I learned more than anything else to focus on the little wins and to hold onto the success stories of our survivors.

I came home to the Midwest, that had not been affected by Covid-19 as New York has. I came home to a place where wearing a mask seems more of a political statement than the preventative life-preserver it is in New York City. Since then, I’ve given my academic and emotional reasons to people arguing with me, why they think it is beyond reason to ask a person to wear a mask in public as a common courtesy to the preservation of life around them. This argument was shocking, to say the least; while in New York there never seemed to be a question of if wearing a mask were appropriate. I hardly saw the city outside of the ICU but an image stays with me when discussing masks. I was riding our company bus back home when I saw a homeless man trying to stay dry and sleep under a store window overhang. The homeless population already has so many challenges and now a pandemic has left them without a place to shelter away from disease. The thing that struck me the most about this man was not his sad situation, but the fact that even though he slept on a window ledge in the rain with all of his belongings in a bag under his head, he still wore a mask.

More prevalent than the devastation of this disease, is the constant reminder of humanity at its best when faced with what feels like insurmountable circumstances. The moment I let others know that I was preparing to go to New York City, I had friends, acquaintances, and even strangers, offer me medical and home-made masks. I had several preceptors, teachers, and Missouri State University alumni reach out to me to offer advice and support. My recent classmates were supportive as ever and sent cards and care packages while checking on me as frequently as my family.

It was inspiring to be a part of a national effort of medical professionals that came together to help subdue a pandemic. Walking through the ICU was a myriad of accents, southern, western, Spanish, Russian, and many more. I was amazed that for nearly every patient that used a language other than English, we were able to find a member of the medical team that could speak with that patient in their native language, as well as, using the translator phone. I watched Nurses effortlessly navigate tangles of cords, tubes and machines, as we added on yet another necessary medication, all the while treating the patient with compassion. I watched physicians and advanced practice providers congregate in the care of the most ill patients I’ve ever seen and bring together a depth of knowledge from every corner of medicine to help our patients.

We had providers from every specialty working together in the ICU at once, which is unprecedented.  Physicians and advanced providers usually only tend to patients with a complaint specific to their specialty, but because so much help was needed in the ICU providers from all specialties all around the country came to help. I was placed alongside advanced practice providers and physicians of every level and specialty in the provider role equivalent to an internal medicine year one resident physician. We were overseen by the house Internal Medicine and Pulmonary/Critical care physicians.

It was an intimidating scene for any provider not accustomed to daily critical care patients, but we realized quickly that it was amazing to have so many variable specialists in the ICU working as a team.

If we couldn’t stop a patient bleeding, there was a trauma surgeon in the next room.

Need to place a patient on a ventilator? There’s an anesthesiologist right here, or an Attending Emergency Medicine Physician beside them.

Can a pregnant patient with Covid receive anti-viral therapy? Ask the OBGYN that’s helping on your team today.

Have a question about how much pain medication to give a patient with a previous tolerance? We just so happen to have a PA that usually works strictly in pain management, right next to you.

I was very worried that as a new graduate, I would slow my team down more than I would help, but that was not the case. I was with wonderful physicians that were trained at directing and educating other medical professionals. My education at Missouri State University was repetitively helpful in the routine information I needed to know to be effective in caring for my patients. As our strictly covid patient population declined, I was allowed to move my role to the cardiac ICU due to my recent rotation in interventional cardiology during school and my background with EKGs as a paramedic.  I was exposed to seizure monitoring through video EEGs in my pediatrics rotation, a skill I never anticipated using again, but I found myself monitoring four epilepsy patients in the cardiac ICU in one week. My surgery rotation was helpful as I assisted in arterial line placement, chest tube placement and suturing. I had previously been teetering between the decision to pursue cardiology or critical care medicine and this experience has shown me that I really love critical care medicine, but I may be able to do both. As the world proceeds forward with the anticipation of a new normal, I hope to see PA schools integrate critical care medicine basics into the regular curriculum, including ventilator management, initiating vasopressor therapy, sedation management and weaning. Practical skills such as using IV pumps, troubleshooting arterial lines, and using swan-ganz catheters were essential and could be easily integrated into any program. I had luckily been exposed to these things as a critical care paramedic prior to PA school, but many advanced practice providers were nervous about their prior lack of education and experience with ventilators as most schools are geared towards a family medicine perspective.

I will be forever grateful for my experience in New York and the education I received. I was lucky enough to arrive with the cavalry, but even with the amazing team we assembled, all the help from around the country and all the support we received, it was still barely enough. Listening to the experiences of the physicians in the weeks preceding our arrival was nothing short of frightening. I know of more than one hospital staff member that was lost to Covid-19 as the hospital physicians and nurses struggled to take care of one their own. Medical supplies of every kind were difficult to obtain at different times. The sheer number of patients was nearly too much to handle even after the emergency staffing arrived and we were forced to put two patients in every ICU room, meant only for one.  I know that as New York cases continue to decline, other states cases are peaking with attempts to reopen. I have no input as to how the country should proceed with reopening, but I do know that the medical profession cannot sustain this effort for long, we won’t have the personnel or medical equipment necessary. I learned to be thankful for my health and for the opportunity to help others in the fight for theirs. I am thankful for all the frontline workers keeping our country afloat. I am thankful to my school for the education they’ve given me that allowed me to help in this effort. I am thankful to my friends and family that have supported me, but most of all, I am thankful to everyone that chooses to wear a mask.

Editorial Column By: David Wright, MS, PA-C, NRP

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) is an action packed, thrilling career that is packed full of explosions, gunshots and major traumas. Paramedics speeding to the scene, lights and sirens blaring, people are lying in the streets, screaming and crying when the medics jump out of the ambulance to save the day. Or at least that’s what the TV shows would have you believe. Watching any TV medical drama would have you believing that doctors are running out to the ambulance bay to meet dying patients who were impaled on a hiking trip, attacked by bears in the city or retrieved from an airplane wreck, but in my 15 years of EMS experience, this never seemed to be the reality of EMS.

Reality is more docile than the dramatic TV representation that gets good viewer ratings. According to a 2016 study, up to 50% of EMS transports are deemed inappropriate emergency calls for ambulance utilization.1 Most EMS workers would agree the current healthcare system in America is overworked and a visit to the emergency department will result in overcrowding of the waiting room, many of which are filled with patients not actually experiencing an emergency. It is important to have a clear delineation of two very different terms; unscheduled care is very different from an emergency. Emergencies are often life or limb threatening, while unscheduled care is just as it sounds, care that was not planned, but still care that needs to occur. Some attempts have been made to combat this with the recent proliferation of urgent cares, but let’s consider another possibility.

Many years ago, physicians would make house calls, but over the years, this model has gone away. Today there are still plenty of healthcare workers who spend their work day travelling from house to house, providing in home continued or preventative care. Many of these providers include home health nursing care, therapy services, social services, and EMS providers. What if we could do this for some of the unscheduled care that is currently overcrowding local emergency departments?

Physician Assistants (PAs) are well trained medical professionals who are capable of performing expanded assessments, can treat patients, perform and interpret laboratory data and prescribe medications.2 These qualities are currently missing from many of our pre-hospital care providers. In order to deliver well rounded, holistic EMS care, providers must be well versed in the unique challenges, interventions and situations that exist in the pre-hospital setting. A lot of this knowledge requires additional education not routinely taught in standard PA programs 6, enter the EMS Physician Assistant.

Enter EMS PA Fellowships…

 To be able to care for this specific subset of patients in the pre-hospital setting, PAs, who are often trained in primary care medicine, would need additional education. That additional education should be focused in both the EMS and Emergency Medicine setting. The fellowship would include didactic work on core emergency medical conditions, assessment and acute management of these conditions, as well as appropriate disposition of patients who experience unscheduled care needs. Additional clinical hours and experience focusing on emergency medicine are also required. Standardized courses such as Basic Life Support (BLS), Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS), Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS), and Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) would be needed by the fellow. Additional Training focusing on common ED treatments for time sensitive diagnosis such as Stroke, STEMI, and Trauma would also be required. Skills training should also be included for procedures such as Central Line Insertion, splinting, immobilization, spinal immobilization, point of care ultrasound (with interpretation) and critical care hemodynamic monitoring would be provided.

In addition to the core emergency medicine training, the EMS PA fellow would also need specific EMS training. EMS specific coursework includes Incident Command Systems (ICS), Emergency Medical Dispatch (EMD), and Hazardous Materials: Awareness level training. Specialized EMS training would focus on tactical medicine, mass gatherings, disaster medicine, urban search & rescue and fireground EMS care would also be completed. EMS systems also have administrative functions often performed or monitored by the Physician Medical Director. Training would also be provided to allow the EMS PA to be able to perform or assist in these functions, and education in QA/QI, continuing education, credentialing, and protocol development.

While cognitive education is important, it is equally important to have education in the psychomotor domain with practical hands on field experience. This experience would prepare the PA to work in the pre-hospital environment after graduation of the fellowship. Hands on field experience includes independent field response with local EMS providers, ambulance field experience, interacting with crews on scene, learning the EMS systems, participating in regional and nation exercises, and experiencing how EMS PAs integrate into the already established EMS system.

After Fellowship: What You Can Do On The Job

After graduation from the EMS fellowship and entering the workforce, the EMS PA would be adding an additional layer of pre-hospital care to the local and regional community. This addition would bring an EMS provider who is trained to provide adjunct services in critical care situations, tactical operations and community health. Including the high utilizers and the low acuity patients who primarily present with unscheduled care, rather than true emergency care needs. It is these patients that have the greatest potential to be dispositioned with on scene care and education, without the need for a hospital visit.

EMS PAs are capable of providing critical care by bringing additional tools and skills to patients who have experienced severe trauma, cardiac arrest or are involved in mass casualty incidents (MCIs). The capability of performing point of care ultrasound, advanced IV access, including central lines in critically ill patients to improve pharmacological resuscitation.3 Performing these exams in the field can improve patient outcomes by decreasing the overall time from injury to OR arrival.4 Patients who require extensive extrication due to entrapment or crush injuries can also benefit from critical care hemodynamic monitoring. EMS PAs are capable of inserting and monitoring arterial catheters for arterial blood pressure monitoring, or urinary catheters to monitor urine output and core temperature.

During cardiac arrests, point of care ultrasound imaging can confirm cases of cardiac standstill, a condition that drops the probability of successful resuscitation to essentially 0%.5 EMS PAs on scene can also provide on scene termination of resuscitation orders can also be provided in cases deemed futile by EMS PAs or on scene providers allowing responders to withhold/stop resuscitative efforts. Often families have more support at home to assist them through the loss of a loved one.

Mass gathering events such as Mardi Gras, special events, festivals, and state fairs brings another set of unusual challenges to a region’s EMS system. The EMS PA is capable of providing online medical control, giving direct orders, and operating outside of the usual paramedic protocols, to expand EMS provider capabilities on scene. These actions, include effective triage and treatment of patients can limit the amount of patients transported by ambulance to area emergency departments.

Police operations can be complimented by the addition of EMS intervention and training, and EMS PAs are able to provide a higher level of care for officers and potential patients when these situations arise. This EMS/law enforcement partnership can also strengthen the community cooperation and improve the law enforcement team health as the EMS PA is also capable of performing preventative care for tactical team members.6

Many EMS systems are frequently plagued by high utilization users. Pre-hospital studies have demonstrated the possibility of almost a 50% reduction in these calls by providing appropriate patient education, resources and disposition to facilities other than the emergency room.7

Paramedics also frequently encounter low acuity patients who are not experiencing a true medical emergency but rather have unscheduled medical needs. It is here the EMS PA may make the largest impact on the healthcare system. These patients are often potentially able to be dispositioned on scene as part of a “treat and release” program without needing medical transport. The following list of conditions are high frequency calls that have the potential of being dispositioned on scene without a hospital visit.

Conclusions

 There are some small barriers to the implementation of a pre-hospital focused EMS PA post-graduate education program but considering the basic framework for the fellowship already exists, the program would be relatively easy to implement. PAs are already highly trained medical professionals who have the ability to improve and augment the current delivery of pre-hospital medicine. Attributes of a well-trained EMS PA increase assessment and clinical skills, improved resource allocation, decreased ED utilization, decreased healthcare costs, and improved overall health literacy.

 

 

References

1  Dejean, D., Giacomini, M., Welsford, M., Schwartz, L., & Decicca, P. (2016). Inappropriate Ambulance Use: A Qualitative Study of Paramedics’ Views.. Healthcare policy, 11(3), 67–79.

2  American Academy of Physician Assistants (2019). What is a PA. Accessed from:  https://www.aapa.org/what-is-a-pa/

3  Bøtker, M. T., Jacobsen, L., Rudolph, S. S., & Knudsen, L. (2018). The role of point of care ultrasound in pre-hospital critical care: a systematic review. Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine, 26(1), 51.doi:10.1186/s13049-018-0518-x

4  Bloom BA, Gibbons RC. Focused Assessment with Sonography for Trauma (FAST) [Updated 2019 Jun 1]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2019 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470479/

5  Cureton, E. L., Ereso, A. Q., Sadjadi, J., & Victorino, G. P. (2008). QS243. The Heart of the Matter: Utility of Ultrasound of Cardiac Activity During Traumatic Arrest. Journal of Surgical Research, 144(2), 363–364. doi: 10.1016/j.jss.2007.12.490

6  National Tactical Officers Association (2018) Tactical Response and Operations Standards for Law Enforcement Agencies. Accessed from: http://ntoa.org/pdf/swatstandards.pdf

7  Clarke, J. L., Bourn, S., Skoufalos, A., Beck, E. H., & Castillo, D. J. (2017). An Innovative Approach to Health Care Delivery for Patients with Chronic Conditions. Population health management, 20(1), 23-30.doi:10.1089/pop.2016.0076

Article written and photos provided by Colton Peltz

On January 13, 2020 the Missouri State University Physician Assistant Cohort of 2021 officially began didactic year. We completed 9 weeks of vigorous course work and each developed a daily routine to manage the sheer volume of material. Talk of a worldwide virus, known as Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2), began to circulate and raised questions regarding the remainder of our semester. Our program faculty have been completely transparent when keeping us up to date with the university’s response. Our professors began developing contingency plans to continue our education remotely in the event that seated classes were canceled. At the end of week 9 the decision to transition to online classes was confirmed. This decision was made in an attempt to practice “social distancing” by limiting large gatherings and in-person contact at the university.

Our faculty have developed virtual course material allowing us to continue our education from home. Currently, we are meeting with our instructors and fellow classmates daily through live virtual Zoom classrooms. These live meetings hold us accountable and provide an opportunity to engage in discussion and group study. During this unprecedented time of closures and disruption, I have no doubt that the MSU Physician Assistant Cohort of 2021 will continue to adapt and overcome in order to play our part in “flattening the curve”.

Q: How is this impacting your studies?

Online PA school? Unfortunately, this is currently the nationwide reality. Our classes have been switched to online “distant” learning for the remainder of the spring semester.

PA School is incredibly difficult even under normal circumstances and adapting to remote learning has been challenging. Our professors have been incredibly flexible and are accessible via email or phone throughout the day. It is comforting to know that our professors are working around the clock to provide us the same level of education that we would have received in the classroom. After a few days of technical difficulties and confusion our cohort has developed a new self-isolation study routine. I am confident that we will continue to excel, and I am thankful that the quality of my education has not been sacrificed despite the current response to a global pandemic.

Q: Will this impact your graduation?

Missouri State University physician assistant didactic year students are still scheduled to graduate on time in December of 2021.

Q: Where are students located at this time?

At this time, we have students completing their course work all over the state of Missouri. We have students that have traveled back to their home state of Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Iowa as well. We miss seated classes with our professors and fellow classmates but are enjoying the quality time at home with family while in quarantine.

Q: How is the pandemic impacting your class? What are general issues they are facing?

After 9 weeks of seated courses our cohort has developed a great sense of camaraderie. We share each other’s joys and frustrations. Through Zoom meetings and conference calls we have remained in daily contact with our classmates to provide mental and emotional support.

We have multiple students in our cohort that have children. On top of the rigorous demands of PA School, these SUPER MOMS and DADS are also homeschooling and caring for their children at home.

Technical difficulties are inevitable. With constant notifications it is easy to miss an assignment or forget about a Zoom meeting. Our instructors have taken the time to compile the weekly objectives for each course in a to-do list which is sent out to us at the beginning of each week. If we weren’t tech savvy at the beginning of the semester, we sure are now!

Q: Has this reshaped your view on patient care or the PA profession?

Absolutely. Physician Assistants are contributing to the healthcare system amidst this global pandemic alongside incredible physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, EMTs, Pharmacists, CNAs, ER techs, Hospital maintenance staff, and more.

The versatile nature of our profession allows PA’s to switch medical specialties throughout their career. This aspect of our profession has been invaluable during these times because PA’s are switching from their respective specialties to Emergency Medicine and Urgent Care to directly care for COVID-19 Patients.

COVID-19 will not deter us from pursuing our dream career. We are no stranger to adversity. By practicing unmitigated daily discipline, we will persevere and graduate to become competent, compassionate providers.

Article written and photos provided by Emily Suchanek

On December 7, 2019, I addressed my classmates, faculty, and our friends and families at the annual White Coat Ceremony. We had just completed our didactic year of learning, and after winter break, we were to embark on the second half of our PA education, clinical year. After sitting in class learning for 394 days and passing 63 exams, we were finally able to put our knowledge to work in real-life clinical settings with real patients.

We began our first of eight, 6-week clinical rotations in January. In early February, after surviving our first clinical rotation and EOR (end of rotation) national examination, we embarked on our second rotation. I was at a family medicine clinic in Bolivar, MO. On the fourth week of my second rotation, talk of a worldwide virus started to circulate at the clinic. At patient’s annual Medicaid visits, my preceptor instructed me to start adding, “you might have heard of the coronavirus, and with your age and medical conditions you would be classified as a ‘high-risk’ individual, so try to limit your travel, keep washing your hands, and avoid touching your face” at the end of patient’s visits. By the fifth week, patient’s with non-emergent appointments (i.e. annual visits, follow-up for hypertension or diabetes) were being called to reschedule for later in the summer. The sixth and final week at the clinic we were down to only seeing same-day patients, functioning like an urgent care. My preceptor was gowned in full PPE and the patients that came in with a chief complaint of “cough” or “fever” were instructed to wait in their car until their visit time, come in through the back door bypassing the waiting room, and were given a surgical mask.

When it was time for our second EOR days on campus, coronavirus had been renamed COVID-19, declared a global pandemic, and minor steps were being taken to prevent and slow the spread. We were unable to take our exam and meet as a whole cohort due to the limit on large public gatherings. We were told that rotation #3 has been cancelled because of hospital systems not allowing students; due to PPE shortages and to cut down on our COVID exposure. We finished our examination and returned home to have the longest (unexpected) break yet in PA school. Now, stay-at-home orders have been placed to “flatten the curve,” schools have been closed for the rest of the semester, and hospitals and clinics have been reduced to caring for COVID+ patients only; no visitors, no elective surgeries, no in-person office visits.

Q: How is this impacting your studies? How will you make up this lost time? Will this impact your graduation? Are you going to be missing out on any clinical experience?

Per ARC-PA (the PA program accrediting body), we are to make-up the lost hours/rotation. After sending the notice that rotation 3 was cancelled, faculty also told us that the plan is to add an additional rotation 9 to the end of our clinical year in December/January. We are hoping hospital systems will begin to allow students back into their institutions and we can continue with rotations 4-8 as planned, plus the additional make-up rotation 9. If everything goes as planned, we will still be able to graduate in December of 2020 and sit for national certification boards in mid-late January. Faculty has been looking into different options to add to our clinical learning in the meantime via online learning modules and virtual OSCEs (objective structured clinical examinations). This is intended to keep our history and physical examination skills strong and for us to work through our assessment and plan of a patient’s work up. Despite the cancelled rotation and this unexpected break, in the end, we will complete all seven of our core rotations plus our elective rotation as previously scheduled, just on a modified timeline.

Q: What are you doing over this time? Are any classmates volunteering?
While we do not have any concrete assignments due over this break time, we are all working and continuing to learn. As a part of our clinical year education, we are to complete a research project that encompasses a paper and poster presentation. Usually, these projects are completed throughout the year with final drafts due in November. Many of my classmates, including myself, are taking advantage of this time to complete our research projects early. We are also using this time to brush up on our clinical medicine knowledge using the topic lists and blueprints created by PAEA, the makers of the EOR examinations. Many of my classmates that are not from the Springfield area traveled back home to spend time with their families. A few of my classmates have reached out to local organizations looking for volunteers to assist the frontline workers with the pandemic. Faculty is keeping us well-informed during this time as well. They are working around the clock to help my cohort and the didactic class through this unprecedented time of virtual learning. Our class has weekly Zoom meetings to stay updated and all faculty is always accessible via email.

Q: How is the pandemic impacting your class? What are general issues they are facing?
While we are all very excited for clinical year to continue our education in the “real world,” we have been nonstop learning and studying for the past year. I know myself, along with my classmates, have welcomed this unexpected break to slow things down and refresh. A handful of my classmates have children and families that they are able to finally spend quality time with while in quarantine. It is definitely disheartening to have things paused, but we know that this is happening not only to us, but to students and programs across the nation and worldwide. Faculty has been nothing but supportive and transparent with us. I have learned to adjust my expectations and be flexible. We are all at a standstill and are at the mercy of the hospital systems to “allow” students back into their facilities to start to learn again. We are all staying positive throughout this time and are hoping we can restart as soon as safely possible.

Q: Has this reshaped your view on patient care or the PA profession?
Since COVID-19 has been labeled a global pandemic and is on the forefront of everyone’s minds, it has made the nation realize the importance of the healthcare and the people that work within it. My classmates and I all worked in healthcare before PA school, were immersed in it while on rotations, and will rejoin it as providers after school. We are all aware of the amazing, hardworking, devoted people that work behind the scenes. It is great to see this highlighted in the news and on social media amidst the sadness that this virus has caused. These workers are upholding the Hippocratic oath that we all took during our White Coat Ceremony. They are risking their own lives to save others. Even a few MSU PA graduates have signed up to work short term contracts in high-volume areas like NYC. I am proud to (in the future) be a part of the brave individuals that have been working on the front lines to fight COVID and save people’s lives.