To be a PA...

Hunter here, with only my 2nd blog post.  Exciting right?  Too be honest, I am surprised Tiff hasn't already posted this news, she has been bugging me to do it for a week now.

Most of you reading this probably know that for the past 4 years I have been working towards going to grad school to be come a Physician Assistant.  Not Physician's Assistant, not Medical Assistant; Physician Assistant.  To give you a brief history of the profession, it was started in the late 1960's at Duke University in order to integrate retired army medics into the health care model without putting them into too much debt or requiring the 4+ year commitment for school.  This exploratory program eventually developed into what we now know as Physician Assistant.  PA schooling typically requires 26-32 months depending on the school.  Roughly the 1st half of that is in classroom didactic study and the 2nd half is clinical rotations covering most major medical specialties (i.e. primary care, emergency medicine, surgery, orthopedics, ect.).  After completion of the schooling a prospective PA has to pass a rigorous test very similar to the medical boards an MD takes at the completion of med school.  Once certified a PA does not practice medicine under their own license but rather under the license of an MD who delegates responsibilities to his PAs.  In most areas of medicine a PA is legally allowed to preform about 80% of the exams, procedures, and diagnostic tests that a MD can.  In many practices across the country doctors rely heavily on PA's to help care for the increasingly huge number of patients they see.  Admissions into PA school is RIDICULOUSLY competitive.  Every year any given schools sees anywhere from 1000 - 3000 applications.  Out of that pool of applicants only about 100-150 are chosen for an on-site interview.  When all is said and done, most schools only have room for between 40 and 70 students.  That breaks down to about 2.5% of applications are accepted for admissions.  Crazy hard right?

So this is what I have been working towards pretty much since I graduated from BYU.  Before I could start applying to schools I had to finish up some pre-reqs that were not part of my under-grad education.   This didn't happen in the 1st year because I got kind of caught up with playing Ultimate Frisbee, but that is another story all together.  The 2nd year it didn't happen cause I got kind of caught up in the whole getting married to Tiff thing.  (Not a very bad excuse right?)  Finally, 3 years after graduating I went back to BYU and finished up all the courses I needed to apply to PA school.  During that application cycle I applied to 3 schools.  The University of Washington, Duke University, and Oregon School of Health Sciences.  I didn't expect much this time around because it was my 1st year applying and I still had yet to finish some of the classes required.  But, to my surprise, I was invited for an interview at UW.  Although I was not selected to join their incoming class, it was a valuable experience in interviewing and it really helped my identify what my application strengths and weaknesses were.

That brings us to 2012.  This year I went all out on my apps.  I applied to 14 schools to which I seemed to meet their minimum requirements.  I came to find out later that I did not meet the requirements for at least 4 of them.  As of September I had been offered interviews at 3 of those schools, A.T. Still University in Mesa, AZ, University of Washington(for the 2nd time), and Duke University.  A.T. Still was on Sept 21, UW on Oct, 9, and Duke on Oct 30.  Obviously I can't yet give you updates on UW or Duke yet, those interviews have yet to happen.

But I can share the extremely amazing super exciting good news that I was offered a spot in A.T. Still's PA class of 2015!!!  I cannot put into words how relieved and happy I am that, not matter what happens in my other 2 interviews, I will have to opportunity to become a PA.  YAY!!!

Check back next month for updates on my other 2 interviews and ultimately what school I decided to go to for my education as a Physician Assistant.