Shadowing Experience

-
Today I wanted to start my first official blog post by reflect on a shadowing experience that I had at the LifeCare Hospital in Wilkinsburg, PA! I worked with a former graduate from the Physician Assistant program at Duquesne named Alex. We met with several patients and she explained the process of seeing and documenting patients in different areas of the hospital. There were several patients that we saw which required us to dress in full protective wear (gown, mask, gloves).

At one point, Alex even let me touch and evaluate a patient's bed wound. The wound was so severe that it had bore through all layers of the patient's skin and had reached her bone. The patient was in severely suffering and was crying out from her pain. Alex remained calm however, and explained clearly and effectively to the patient how the hospital staff was going to take care of the wound. That made the patient calm down and stop crying out. This interaction served to be very eye-opening for me because I was able to see how important it is to remain calm in alarming and difficult situations with patients.

I really enjoyed actually preforming hands-on work in the healthcare setting with Alex (before I had only volunteered in a hospital and barely had any patient interaction). I also realized that I need to strengthen my skills of interacting with patients because sometimes I felt timid or nervous when introducing myself or helping Alex explain part of patients' care plans. Although, I am confident that this skill will strengthen over time with more experience in my field. All-in-all, it was a great experience and I hope to shadow other Physician Assistants in the future!


Thanks for reading and until next time!

-Meredith

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why does the medical field need PAs?

-
Good evening and happy Wednesday! Today's post is going to be short and sweet... and I am going to discuss three major reasons of why physician assistants are in high demand in the medical field. The first reason is because there is a large population of United States citizens who have recently entered the retired and elderly age category. These people were from the "baby boomer" generation, when the number of children being born in America skyrocketed, following World War II. With this increase of elderly Americans, there is also an increase Americans who are becoming ill or needing to go to the hospital. PAs help to meet that demand in seeing and treating the sick. Another reason why physician assistants are needed in the medical field today comes from the hardships that many people face in their journey of becoming a doctor. Since the road to a medical doctorate is timely and expensive, many people choose not to do it. Therefore, PAs are often needed in order t
Read more

Dream speciality

-
Hello! Tonight I am going to quickly discuss what it means for a physician assistant to pick a speciality and what kind of field I would like to hopefully pick to specialize in. Many PAs pick a specific area that they would like to work in, and this is usually acquired during the rotation process of their major (at least at Duquesne). This is a very convenient aspect of the physican assistant program at Duquesne because the ability to learn more about specialty areas of medicine is integrated right into a semester's curriculum. There are 7 rotations total (pediatrics, surgery, OBGYN, etc.) and the final rotation is chosen by the PA student. This part of the rotation set-up is another factor that attracted me to the program at Duquesne.   So in the end, if I am lucky, I will hopefully be picked up the hospital/practice that I am assigned for my last rotation. Growing up, I always wanted to specialize in surgery and try to work in an emergency room. Recently, however, I have be
Read more

Nurse Practitioner vs. Physician Assistant?

-
Good evening! Today's post is going to briefly discuss the similarities and differences between nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs). Both jobs are extremely similar but it is important to understand the distinctions between the two. I learned a lot of information regarding two occupations in one of my PA classes that I took at Duquesne. Both occupations are generally able to, but not always: diagnose and treat patients  prescribe different medications  preform medical studies, screenings, and vaccinations have access to the medical histories of patients Additionally, both PAs and NPs work alongside different kinds of doctors. This is not always the case, however, because some PAs or NPs can work in their own independent businesses.  A large difference, however, between the two is that NPs usually pick a specific area of medicine in which they would like to work in. This may be pediatrics, oncology, geriatrics, cardiology, etc. They will theref
Read more