A Day in the Life: LTJG Ari Doucette, PA-C, MPAS

April 11, 2012

While in Afghanistan, a Navy PA provides medical care for military personnel, prisoner of war detainees, and local citizens, while exposing British health care providers to the PA profession.
 

A Day in the Life: Jacqueline McSparron, PA-C

February 27, 2012

A woman who became a PA so she could provide health care in Africa is living her dream.
 

A Day in the Life: Kaatje van der Gaarden, PA-C

December 13, 2011

A PA specializing in rehabilitation medicine finds reward in caring for patients with debilitating injuries.
 

A Day in the Life: Zehra Ahmed, PA-C, MBBS

October 25, 2011

A PA describes her time in Oworobong, a rural village in Ghana, treating patients at a government clinic and adjusting to the cultural challenges such an immersion can bring.
 

A Day in the Life: Terri Peischl, MS, PA-C

August 23, 2011

The author describes a typical day working for a PA pilot project at a major hospital in South Australia.
 

A Day in the Life: Jessica M. Rodriquez, MS, PA-C

June 10, 2011

An emergency medicine PA relates the typical flow of patients and variety of procedures she performs on a daily basis.
 

A Day in the Life: Lynn Tyrer, PA-C

Lynn Tyrer, PA-C May 03, 2011

Since becoming a PA, I have passionately believed that we can help meet medical needs worldwide— and I even found evidence supporting that belief when I wrote my research thesis as a student.
 

A Day in the Life: Robert G. Baeten II, MCMS, PA-C

April 12, 2011

A PA who practices in cardiac critical care recounts his responsibilities during a particularly busy night shift at Piedmont Hospital.
 

A Day in the Life: Nanette Laufik, PA-C

February 15, 2011

A PA living in Australia as part of a trial to introduce PAs to remote areas in Queensland describes a busy day at her health center and the unique aspects of health care in the country.
 

A Day in the Life: Leslie Brooks, MS, PA-C

December 14, 2010

The author describes her last day as a medical volunteer caring for orphaned and homeless children in Haiti after the earthquake.
 

A Day in the Life: Nicole Larson, MPAS, PA-C

October 19, 2010

A PA who practices in thoracic surgery describes a busy day in the hospital and the clinic.
 

A Day in the Life: Timothy Sayles, MPAS, PA-C

August 17, 2010

The author recounts the challenges and rewards of practicing at a rural health clinic in central Texas.
 

A Day in the Life of Gina Brown, MPAS, PA-C

June 25, 2010

A PA working at a family practice clinic in Kabul, Afghanistan, describes her day as a Mother-Child Health Coordinator.
 

A day in the life of Major Shawn T. Buller, APA-C, MPH

April 13, 2010

The author narrates the activities of a day while deployed as a aeromedical physician assistant in Iraq.
 

A day in the life of Alexandra Braunstein Scott, MS, PA-C, MPH

February 11, 2010

A PA who works in the Michigan Clinical Research Unit at the University of Michigan Hospital describes an average day in the unit.
 

A Day in the Life of Scott Blow, MPAS, PA-C

Scott Blow, MPAS, PA-C December 28, 2009

Follow this PA as he treats a wide range of burn wounds in the operating room and clinic at a regional burn center in Florida.
 

A Day in the Life: Alexandra Godfrey, BSc, PT

Alexandra Godfrey, BSc, PT October 14, 2009

A day in both the anatomy lab and the hospital teaches this student how a constant awareness of illness, suffering, and loss will be part of being a PA.
 

A Day in the Life: Shana Perman, PA-C

Shana Perman, PA-C August 19, 2009

Babies in the neonatal intensive care unit face many struggles, from intubation to gastric surgery to eye surgery. The reward comes in seeing a baby get better enough to go home.
 

A Day in the Life: Michelle M. Howe, MPAS, PA-C

Michelle M. Howe, MPAS, PA-C June 11, 2009

Facing down protesters, reassuring anxious patients, and conducting research for a better future are all in a day's work for a PA working at a large family planning clinic.
 

A day in the life: D. Cristopher Benner, PA-C, MMSc, FAWM

D. Cristopher Benner, PA-C, MMSc, FAWM April 01, 2009

In addition to practicing in emergency medicine, I am a Fellow of the Academy of Wilderness Medicine, Wilderness Medical Society, and I volunteer with a search and rescue (SAR) team that responds to incidents all over the state of California.
 

A day in the life: Rebecca Tinsman, RPA-C

March 10, 2009

I'm volunteering for a month at the WE-ACTx Clinic, Kigali, Rwanda. More than 250,000 Tutsi women were raped by Hutu men during the 100 days of genocide. Today, many of the women infected with HIV during the genocide have AIDS and are in need of experienced medical care. Rwanda is now one of the most stable countries in Africa, but it is still struggling to meet the needs of the sick. When capable foreign aid is offered, it is often accepted.
 

A day in the life: Regan R. Miller, Capt, USAF, PA-C

Regan R. Miller, Capt, USAF, PA-C February 11, 2009

My deployment has me stationed at a forward operating base (FOB) near the city of Jalalabad, Afghanistan. My primary responsibilities are to mentor an Afghanistan National Army (ANA) doctor/hospital commander and his 14-member staff and to provide health care to the coalition troops stationed at the FOB.
 

A day in the life: Alan Howard, PA-C

Alan Howard, PA-C December 01, 2008

Gilroy, California, is a town of about 50,000 people halfway between the urban sophistication of the Bay Area and the agricultural backdrop of several Steinbeck novels. I work at Saint Louise Regional Hospital in a ninebed emergency department. I am one of three PAs who work full-time, and we also have three PAs who work part-time on the staff.
 

A day in the life: Renee Wittenmyer, PA-C

Renee Wittenmyer, PA-C October 01, 2008

The Indiana Hemophilia and Thrombosis Center (IHTC) was started 10 years ago by two hematologists who dreamed of a comprehensive clinic that could meet the needs of patients with benign hematologic conditions. They began hiring PAs in the spring of 2004 to help them manage the complex medical care their patients required.
 

A day in the life: Zachary Hartsell, MPAS, PA-C and Keith Kehoe, PA-C

, Keith Kehoe, PA-C August 01, 2008

It is spring in Scotland, and we are both part of the pilot project run by the National Health Service (NHS) exploring the use of physician assistants.
 

A Day in the life: Dawn Colomb-Lippa, PA-C

June 01, 2008

Many years ago, when I was planning a career change, I knew one thing for sure: I wanted to teach. I knew that my next move had to put me in a field in which education was guided by practitioners. I wanted to be able to help students learn what seemed unlearnable— and for me, that was teaching gross anatomy. Now I spend my days playing multiple roles: PA professor, orthopedic clinician, and mother. There is really no such thing as an "average" day in my world, but here I try to describe as close to my average day as I can.
 

A day in the life: Stephen Steiner, PA-C

April 01, 2008

I take care of skin for a living. Working in a dermatology practice for the past 7 years, I've grown to appreciate the prevalence of skin cancer, the intractability of an itch that can't be scratched enough, and the heartbreak of an acne flare just before a prom. On any given day, I can see a range of patients, from a child as young as a few days old to a frail, elderly woman older than 90 years.
 

A Day in the Life: William C. Bisbee, PA-C

December 01, 2007

My life as a research technologist changed forever after I attended an informational talk on the physician assistant profession one day in the fall of 1975. After 2½ years of working in laboratory science, I was searching for a career that would bring me closer to human subjects. Two years, later I settled in rural Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, to practice medicine.
 

A Day in the Life: Nicholas Oravetz, PA-C

October 01, 2007

As a PA student, I aspired to a high-intensity career in emergency medicine or surgery. Once I graduated, though, I learned that new PAs with no experience have trouble landing jobs of this type. Fortunately, I also learned about interventional radiology (IR) around this time. I discovered what PAs working in IR at my hospital were doing and how they were utilized.
 

A Day in the Life: Kristen K. Will, MHPE, PA-C

Kristen K. Will, MHPE, PA-C August 01, 2007

It wasn't until almost 5 years after graduating, when I accepted a position with a new hospitalist group, that I realized that being a hospitalist PA encompassed everything I enjoyed—high acuity patients, a team approach to medicine, and a fast-paced environment.
 

A Day in the Life: James R. Kilgore, PhD, PA

June 01, 2007

I run a company called Clinical Research Consultants, Inc, which is a pharmaceutical clinical trial management organization, and I still practice as a PA in the clinic providing care for the patients who are enrolled in our clinical trials. My work day starts when I'm still at home, way before the first cup of coffee has had a chance to get cold.
 

A Day in the Life: Michelle Grisonichi, MPAS, PA-C

Michelle Grisonichi, MPAS, PA-C April 01, 2007

When I started PA school at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, I knew I would focus on surgery. I had worked in the OR as a clinical assistant for 3 years while attending college, and becoming a surgical PA was definitely at the front of my mind. But not until my clinical rotations during my third year of PA school did I research attending a PA surgical residency program.
 

A Day in the Life: Katie Iverson, PA-C, MPAS and Amber Sheeley, PA-C, MPAS

, Amber Sheeley, PA-C, MPAS February 01, 2007

This past fall, we had the opportunity to run medical clinics in the poor colonias of Mazatlan, Mexico.
 

A Day in the Life: Catherine Hoelzer, MPH, PA-C

December 01, 2006

The sun is blazing and the sky is clear. It's going to be a hot day here where I work with an NGO called Christian Mission Aid (CMA) in the upper Nile region of southern Sudan.
 

A Day in the Life: James M.Taft, PA-C

October 01, 2006

I always thought I would practice ER or family medicine after I graduated. I never envisioned the combination of clinical practice and research in neurology that currently fills my days.
 

A Day in the Life: Pedro Gonzalez, PA-C

August 01, 2006

The PA profession was foreign to me, growing up as I did in the streets of East Los Angeles. In those days I would have never guessed the enormous possibilities in this great career.
 

A Day in the Life: Jared R. Pennington, PA-C, MHS

June 01, 2006

I began my career as a PA in 2004, and my first job was in emergency medicine. I stayed for about 6 months, until I realized that I wanted to pursue a career in surgery.
 

A Day in the Life: Jeff Miller, PA-C

Jeff Miller, PA-C April 01, 2006

I was 42 years old before I returned to college to become a physician assistant. All the years—more than 20—that I worked as a scrub tech, I always wanted to be more involved in the care of orthopedic patients, and I finally went to school in 1995 to become a surgical first assistant. That helped me to understand the surgical side of orthopedics—but not the patient care side. Finally, an orthopedic surgeon I worked with suggested that being a PA would allow me to use my skills at their highest levels, and I decided to venture back to school.
 

A Day in the Life: Helen Martin, MT, MMS, PA-C

Helen Martin, MT, MMS, PA-C March 01, 2006

My career as a PA started shortly after I moved to rural Tennessee after my graduation from Nova Southeastern University in July 2001. I work for Dr. Lynette Adams, running her family practice clinic in Unionville, Tenn. Dr. Adams also has a clinic and an urgent care center in Shelbyville, Tenn. I work at all three locations.
 

A Day in the Life: Barbara Kimmons, PA-C

Barbara Kimmons, PA-C December 01, 2005

I would never have guessed that when I graduated from PA school, I would find myself practicing obstetrics and urogynecology.
 

A Day in the Life: Christine Canning, MHP, PA-C

June 01, 2005

My clinical practice is in the outpatient setting, and I also have supervisory and administrative duties related to both our hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) program and our PA service. In my 16 years as a PA, I have found that there are virtually endless opportunities to grow, learn, and contribute to the many layered aspects of patient care.
 

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