Physician assistants help doctors and patients too
From the time Vanessa Stevens was a young girl, she wanted to be a veterinarian. She went to Texas A&M and had every intention to go to veterinary school – she even was accepted to the school there. But instead of going to vet school, she came to Fort Worth.
“It would take the world to change me from being a vet, and I did,” she said.
Stevens changed her mind because midway through her undergraduate studies she learned about becoming a physician assistant. In addition to applying to vet school, she applied to the program at the UNT Health Science Center, and decided that being a PA would be a better fit for her than becoming a vet.
The week of Oct. 6-12 marks National Physician Assistant Week, and physician assistant students at the UNT Health Science Center will be continuing their work on local health literacy projects to commemorate the first graduating class of PAs.
Physician assistants debuted at Duke University in 1967, when the first class of students graduated. The curriculum was developed by physicians to train people to practice medicine in areas where physicians may not be available, said Patti Pagels, clinical education coordinator and assistant professor in physician assistant studies at the Health Science Center.
PAs are considered “partners in medicine,” Pagels said, because they practice with a physician as a supervisor. They can conduct exams, diagnose treatments, make referrals or arrange tests and labs, and can write prescriptions except for some drugs restricted by the state.
If treated in an office by a PA, Pagels said, “you would probably say, ‘What’s the difference?’”
Pagels went back to school to become a PA in the 1990s, after years of working in health administration and health education. The Health Science Center takes about 30 students each year out of around 700 applications, and many of the students decide to attend to make a career change.
America McGuffee spent nearly 14 years as a speech pathologist and often worked with medical staff. She decided to enter the PA program this academic year and said that although she does occasional work as a speech pathologist, studying is a full-time job.
“You have to really mean business,” she said.
McGuffee said that sheÂ’s constantly asked why she didnÂ’t go to medical school instead of the PA program.
“I just don’t feel the need to do that at this point,” she said, adding that knowing she could work with physicians and other medical staff and spend more time with patients was an incentive to choose being a PA as a career.
Stevens said that while vet work would have made her content, she felt sheÂ’d be missing the human interaction that comes from working with patients instead of animals.
“It can’t be about the money, the power, the prestige; it has to be about the people,” Stevens said.
There are some advantages to being a physician assistant as opposed to a physician, Pagels said. There is always a physician affiliated with a PA, which means there is always someone to bounce ideas and theories off of, and there arenÂ’t the same headaches about keeping a medical practice afloat, she said.
Additionally, since PAs all pass a national exam, it is easy to move from state to state, as long as thereÂ’s a physician willing to work with a PA, Pagels said. Specializing in a medical field is also easy, requiring only that a PA find a physician willing to work with and teach the person, she said.
Mike Isenberg, a second-year PA student, is president of the Physician Assistant Student Association at the Health Science Center, and made the career switch from counseling and ministry. Isenberg “thought about medical school for about five minutes,” he said but decided that studying to become a doctor wasn’t a practical choice for him at the time.
Last year the Physician Assistant Student Association at the Health Science Center received two grants of more than $1,000 each for the association and for a charity of the membersÂ’ choice from the American Academy of Physician Assistants. One of the grants was given to the Southwestern Diabetic Foundation Inc., an organization that has a summer camp where diabetic children learn to manage their disease, and the other grant is being used by the PA group for health literacy projects.
The projects include buying childrenÂ’s books that can help learn about health and then reading the books to children at the Presbyterian Night Shelter. Books will also be given out, and PA students who go to underserved areas on their clinical rotations can also take books with them to hand out.
PAs are in a position to educate patients a bit more since they are not as harried as doctors, McGuffee said, but raising health literacy should be every health professionalÂ’s goal.
“It’s going to be a nurse, a PA, a doctor. We’re all going to have to work with it,” she said.
Contact Bassett at ebassett@bizpress.net
