Now that the reality of being accepted to Physician Assistant school is settling in, I’m more and more convinced I made the right decision. This was reinforced the other night when I was working.

The attending mentioned it and one of the more senior PAs turned around gave a hearty “Congrats” and offered me a high five. This definitely helped my ego. But that wasn’t what really drove home my decision. It was later that evening.

A trauma patient came in. During a trauma there are a number of people in the room, one or two techs, one or more nurses and generally at least three providers. One of these will be a doctor, but the others are sometimes PAs. This patient came in somewhat stable but her condition quickly got worse. The decision was made to intubate her.

It was at this point I realized in addition to the attending doctor for the zone the other providers in the room were all PAs. The attending was supervising and monitoring, but otherwise the PAs were calling the shots, including performing the intubation and putting in what are known as a central line and an arterial line.

They rocked it.

My goal is still to be a PA in an emergency department (ideally to come back to where I currently work as a tech.) Above is part of the reason, because the PAs here are very important members of the team and once proven themselves, can do a lot.

But, it’s not just traumas. One might call that the most “sexy” aspect of working in the ED, but the honest trust, they end up spending far more time with the patient with a dislocated shoulder, or counselling a patient on why they should take their meds, or a million other smaller medical interventions. They fill in a lot of gaps and have a lot of close patient contact. I’m looking forward to that.

But hopefully the day will come when I can feel as confident as the PAs I currently work with so that when the trauma comes in, I can rock it like they did.

As always, the above views are mine only and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.