Physician Assistant Case Study

My decision to become a Physician Assistant (PA) is the result of the experiences and the knowledge gained from volunteering, shadowing and working close with PAs for the last several years. Moreover, the decision to choose PA as a career is also due to the personal and professional experiences observed while attending the first two years of medical school. While I have wanted to be a physician since the junior year of undergraduate studies, my perspective of the role of a doctor in terms of patient-care altered during a Family/Internal Medicine clinical rotation in Atlanta, Georgia. During this rotation, a group of four medical students was assigned to one Medical Doctor (MD) or one PA for a total of twelve weeks. Each morning, the students …show more content…
In terms of administrative duties, medical ethics and patient care, there were no major differences between the MD and the PA but I did notice the extra time the PA spent with each patient in answering questions and concerns. The focus of the PA was on prevention, taking the whole person into account rather than focusing only on the presenting symptoms or illness. I felt as if the patients wanted to spend more time with the PA because they felt more comfortable asking detailed questions and sharing more of their story that in turn helped the PA help them. I perceived the idea that medicine is a collaborative process where if the provider did not know an answer to a particular question, they would seek help from colleagues and research until they find a solution. The PA I was alongside with clearly demonstrated the collective techniques by telling a patient that they did not know the answer to a question, but they eventually did follow up with an answer after cooperating with their supervising physician and medical research. Besides, working with the PA for the next several days allowed me to apprehend further about what PAs are when it comes to treating patients and patient care. Not only were the PAs following the steps of the MDs, they were resonating with me more of what I think a good patient care is by being a part of the patient 's life story and by attending their medical needs, in addition to …show more content…
During the third week of the rotation, I had the opportunity to scrub in on an accident case with a surgical PA and a physician surgeon. During the procedure, both the PA and the surgeon was an expert in their role as clinical practitioners and it was perhaps impossible for an outsider to isolate the PA from the surgeon in the operating room. The authoritative or paternalistic figure I had in mind of being a doctor vanished in that operating room as I was seeing how two colleagues in the same profession, with the same ambition, were synergistically attending the unconscious patient. I learned that day that while a physician can be the final decision-maker or can have the final say, a PA-C is an expert in their chosen field and their passion, hunger, and commitment to medicine to constantly grow, ranks them equal to any other medical