Life Of A PA – A Day In The Life Of A Physician Assistant|The Every Day Life Of A Physician Assistant

Day 137:

Friday January 9, 2009

We started our Friday off with a lecture in ACLS at 9am on PEA or pulseless electrical activity.  In other words, you don’t feel a pulse, but you still see electrical activity.

Next was another pharmacology lecture.  Not much to say here.

The last lecture of the day from 1-3pm was again in ACLS.  We covered aystole and then practiced everything we have done so far.  Asystole is quite cool.  Its what you always see on shows like ER or Scrubs.  Most of the time you you watch the show though they say “flat line” and not asystole.

Day 136:

Wednesday January 7, 2009

We start the day with a 9am lecture in pharmacology.  I looked ahead in the book last night and saw that we will probably be covering antibacterials at the end of this semester.  I really hope to get to those sooner as it seems these are drugs that are used most often.

After pharmacology we had our real first lecture for ACLS.  Today’s topic was on ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia.  Nothing too too complicated, but still a challenge.  We actually have quizzes that we will have to turn in.  The person teaching ACLS also likes to include people in the lectures.   By this I mean she likes to put peoples names or pictures on slides and ask them questions.  I guess this is a good way to make sure everyone pays attention, but wow…how stressful.

After lunch, we had our first surgery lecture.  The lecture was on introductory surgery and was basically a fast overview of surgery.  After that we had surgery lab.  Knot tying boards where handed out and we learned how to tie our first knot.  Some of us also went over how to tie a surgeon’s knot.  Playing guitar for quite a while not, tying knots is quite easy.  It seems after doing it a few times, like playing guitar, my fingers remember what to do without me thinking about it.  I think i’m going to really love surgery!

Lucky for us…we haven’t started small groups yet…which means we don’t have class at all tomorrow.  YAY!  Normally thurday will also be test day.  So we would normally have small groups in the morning and then a test at 3pm.

It seems like RSS feeds are the coolest thing on the internet these days.  That being said, I have revamped the RSS feed for the site.  You will now see a button to the right telling you have many people are subscribed to the site’s RSS feed.  You will also notice that the RSS feed is now powered through Google’s feedburner service.  After playing around on the internet, I found the feedburner service to the best for both the users and for me, the admin.  So please subscribe to the feedburner RSS feed.  You can also enter your e-mail address in the box to the right had have the latest post and whatnot send right to your inbox.  This is also part of feedburner.

Hope you enjoy the new added feature.  My goal is to have over 200 active subscribers so lets see if we can do it

Day 135:

Tuesday January 6, 2009

The second day of the new semester.  I got to sleep in really late today as we would normally have small group in the morning.  Our first lecture was at 1pm and it was on hypertension.  This seems to be a very important subject.  No matter what field of medicine you work in you will see hypertension.  It seems to me like everyone is getting HTN.  Its like the new craze!  This lecture was actually taught by a PA that also will be teaching us surgery on Wednesday afternoons.  Now that is the class that I am really looking forward to.

The next and last lecture of the day was on lipids.  The lecture started off easy, but got harder the longer she lectured.  I guess there are many different forms of lipids and its important to know what is what.  Most of it you should know even if not in medicine.  Like…LDL, HDL, cholesterol…i’m sure you know about those.

Day 134:

Monday January 5, 2009

Its a new year and another semester of PA school.

Unlike last semester, our first class on Monday’s is at 10am.  Ah, the extra sleep is well appreciated.  We started today with pharmacology.  Like I said before, we have this class every semester of our didactic year.  The cool thing is its not like a new class.  We actually just continued from t he exact point that we left off at.

The next class at 11am was clinical physiology.  This class isn’t much different from the physiology class we took last semester, but this class is taught in the PA department.  We basically go over the physiology of whatever body system we are covering in clinical medicine II which is our other class for today.  Actually in physiology we are covering neurology, which we have covered in the physiology class last week, but just in more detail and newer material this go round.

After lunch we started our clinical medicine II class.  The topic we are coverng is Cardiology.  A very important topic.  We have been told that the board exam is like 60% cardiology.  So I have to make sure to focus on this material.  We started with an hour and a half lecture on cardiology basics.  Just going over the anatomy and the basic vocabulary and ideas.

From 2:30 to 3:00 we had a short lecture on ACLS or Advanced Cardiac Life Support.  We all have to be certified before we can go on rotations.  The whole course is being taught by a PA-C that works in the MCG emergency department.  Lucky for us the course is only costing us $50 compared to the hundred and something it would else where.  I’m a little worried in the fact that ACLS is not supposed to be easy, but i’m sure it will go just fine.

The last lecture of the day was on chest pain and thoracic aortic aneurysms.  We watched a video on how a kid had a aneurysm that doctors did find.  In fact the family had a history of it, but the doctors would not listen when the family told them about it.  In the end the kid died, but the family is trying to increase awareness about aneurysms.

So the third semester looks like it is going to really focus on clincial medicine.  We also has small groups again, but this time we will be out in practice working on real patients.  We won’t start this for a few weeks, but im ready to see where I have to go.

So our scheule looks like this:

Monday:

pharmacology
physiology
clincial medicine

Tuesday:

Small groups
Clinical Medicine

Wednesday:

pharmacology
clinical medicine
Surgery

Thursday:

small groups
clincial medicine

Friday:

pharmacology
clinical medicine

Day 133:

Thursday December 11, 2008

It has finally arrived…the last day of the second semester of PA school.  After the days events i’ll give you my thoughts on the entire semester.

First for the day was the Pharmacology exam.  I did very well on the multiple choice portion of the exam.  We also had a written portion for the exam.  After everyone was done with the exam the written portions were shuffled up and passed back out.  We then graded each others written portion.  We each had a given number so we wouldn’t know who got what or who’s exam we were grading.  I think I did alright on the written portion, but definitely not as well as the multiple choice.  At this point we don’t know how much the written portion is worth, but we were told ” I won’t let it hurt your grade,” by the teacher.  So I guess it is wait and see now.

So you think that is it…???

No, after the pharmacology exam we went through BLS certification.  It was actually a nice way to get out all my stress by beating the dummy over and over when I did chest compressions.

Now for a long christmas break.  We start classes again January 5th or 2009.

And now for thoughts on this semester.  This semester has been a whirlwind of learning, stress, fun and every other human emotion.  There was some fear and probably even some crying at some point.  It is amazing though to look back and see how much we have done this semester and how much we have learned.  There was no baby feeding, it was jump right in and start learning the important stuff.  It is also interesting to know that I now can do a full physical.  Now I can’t wait until next semester to put my physical skills to use on real patients.  As I have said before, this is supposed to be a difficult semester, the most difficult in fact.  I hope that is true.  It seems like there will only be one test per week next semester which is a welcome change.  I have to say, with everyday it seems the light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter and brighter!

Day 132:

Wednesday December 10, 2008

So they handed out the clinical medicine final and the EKG exam at the same time today.  I looked at the 10  EKGs and quickly put it back down to start on the clinical medicine final.  The clin med final wasn’t that bad…I can’t say it was easy, but it wasn’t break neck either.  After doing the clin med final I picked back up the EKG test and started.  I didn’t have trouble with giving rates or rhythms.  The hard part came when it said “Interpret this EKG.”  Some I knew for sure, but others I had no idea what the EKG was depicting.  I guess we will see how the grades come out.
Tonight will be fun…studying for the pharmacology final tomorrow!

Day 131:

Tuesday December 9, 2008

I stayed up late last night studying for the written exam for our physical examination class.  Basically I just went through the Bates book and made sure I knew all the major details.  I also went over all the old quizzes we had had and the questions that I could remember that were on previous test.

All that being done last night, today’s exam from 9-12 o’clock was not bad at all.  I did well.  One exam down!  Now to study for the harder exam for clinical medicine.  I have to go over everything we have done all semester in this class plus make sure I know EKG stuff.  I have said before, but tomorrow will be an exam and a test on EKGs.  The test part is going to be 10 EKGs that we have to interpret.  Oh the fun