Looking at my notes, apparently I didn’t blog at all during May. I suppose I was busier than I thought. But I figured it was time for another quick update on “Greg’s journey to apply to PA School.”

First, the spring semester of 2023 is in the books. Biochem, Writing, and Stats all complete. Biochem was definitely the most interesting and best of the classes. Stats was delivered at a 100 level and was basic enough I could skip the study seasons and still take the exams without much studying. With the homework bonus (which actually was quite helpful) she gave, technically my grade was 100+. What’s the odds of that? 100% I can tell you since it’s a past event that happened. This was the only class that had an in-person component and it was at 9:00 AM four days a week. It was just useful enough to tie the notes to the concepts that I made a point of attending. As noted, I did tend to skip the review classes, except for the last two exams, where I actually took the exam during the review session as it fit my schedule better.

Writing was hit or miss. It was all online and honestly, little feedback from the instructor, so I’m not entirely sure if I got much out of it. But as most programs want some sort of writing intensive class, it was necessary to take.

The Biochem class was all online and one of the few times in my academic career I actually went to office hours for help. After asking me exactly how long ago I had taken the chemistry pre-req and commenting that they really expected it to be within the past few years, not 35+ years ago, I was even more incentivized to do well.

The professor honestly, had put together one of the best online setups I’d seen, taking good advantage of the tools Blackboard offered. A few of my previous online classes were basically “here’s a lecture, listen and that’s about it.” One was even simply “here’s the Powerpoints, good luck figuring out what’s relevant and what’s not when it comes time to take the test.” In this case however, she had study guides, required participation in an online discussion and made use of online study quizzes to help reinforce the material. In fact you couldn’t move onto the next module until you had taken the quizzes, tests and exams for the previous material. This last detail did munge me up a bit at the very end when I was prepared to take the final but couldn’t see my grade for the previous exam yet (the grades wouldn’t show until after midnight on a specific day so that everyone had a chance of taking the exam without cheating off someone else taking it earlier).

I also had a study partner that I had met during Organic Chemistry last summer that works at AMC with me, so we were able to take advantage of the study rooms in the AMC school library and help each other with homework and studying.

Besides being well designed and run, it was also the most interesting class, as we got to delve fairly deep into some of the biological-chemistry pathways that occur in us. It was pretty interesting to see stuff to that detail rather than simply stuff like “and then Acetyl-CoA enters the Krebs cycle”. Now we got to learn exactly how and why that happens. Trust me, it’s pretty damn cool!

After classes were over, I was prepared to take a little over a week to teach the annual Weeklong Cave Rescue class I teach. Unfortunately my largest client had a major upgrade the weekend before that went sideways, exactly for a reason I had predicted. So rather than leaving town Wednesday night after work with a buddy of mine, I ended up working on the issue for much of the week and finally leaving Friday morning and having to drive all by myself to Alabama. This led to a definite lack of sleep. And even then I had to deal with some work issues. And finally a drive home by myself and then another shift in the ED.

Finally Memorial Day weekend I spent with some friends at an annual retreat of sorts.

And now, I’ve started my last planned prereq, MicroBiology. Ironically this was the last class (and last final) I took for my original undergrad degree, but at the time I didn’t pay for lab, despite ending up taking it at the professor’s insistence anyway. So ironically it appears it’ll be the last exam before PA school, unless I decide on my own to take more this fall.

So that’s the update from here. Now back to work (after the second night in a row of working until 3:30 AM).

Work and school have conspired to use up my time, so I’ve been blogging less often. But I wanted to make a point of blogging this week because I’ve reached an unofficial milestone.

Over the weekend I reached my unofficial 1000 hour mark as an ED Tech.

I say unofficially because I’m using a fairly conservative method of counting it and officially, I reached it close to two weeks ago. So why am I counting my number, that came later, rather than the earlier number? Because this one is more meaningful to me and gives me more of a margin for counting.

Officially, by the timeclock, I reached 1000 hours over two weeks ago. However, this time included by 24 hours of initial classroom orientation and the time to get my CPR recertified and some other training where I wasn’t even in the Emergency Department.

The other factor, was that officially, many of my shifts have been 8.5 hours, with .5 reserved for lunch. However, due to staffing shortages, often many of us techs will work through our meals (and swipe the timeclock for that, guaranteeing we get paid for that time). But it was simply easier for me to ignore those “worked through meals” and only count an 8 or 12 hour shift as 8 or 12 hours, not 8.5 or 12.5 hours.

So, I simply tracked time I was actually in the Emergency Department.

Now I’d like to say that when I hit my unofficial 1000 hour mark I was doing something exciting like working a trauma or even something routine like taking an EKG. However, the truth is, I was sitting at a desk going over some study materials. I was working what’s known as the “BB-Short Stay”. Generally when working here, there’s very little to do (I think I did 18 sets of vitals in 8 hours, and one bed change. But, that’s the nature of the job sometimes.) Fortunately, my next 4 hours of that shift was back in the main area of the Emergency Department and I was able to be more active.

That’s not to say I didn’t celebrate a bit:

So, a final note, the reason for the 1000 hour celebration, is that a number of the schools I’m applying to require a minimum of 1000 “patient contact hours” (one only requires 500 hours and another 750 hours) and now I’ve met that! That’s why I don’t count the classroom orientation or the like because that’s technically didn’t involve any patient contact.

At this point, I can start applying, despite a few classes this semester pending final grades and for most schools, needing to take Microbiology, which I’m doing over the summer.

But this was the single biggest hurdle that I had the least control over. For classes, I could simply sign up. However for the patient contact hours, I had to first get a job, ideally in a place that gave me more contact than simply “taking a set of vitals now and then” and then gain enough hours. Officially my job is only 24 hours a week and I started in late October. Fortunately I’ve been able to pick up a lot of extra hours, hence hitting my 1000 hour mark in only 6 months. My hope of course is that my 1000+ hours of patient contact in an Emergency Department stands out compared to say someone who has only had 1000+ hours in say a medical office where they’re simply taking vitals.

So this bridge crossed!

Slowly but surely getting there.

Standard Disclaimer: nothing here represents any official policy or action of my employee Albany Medical Health Systems and I do not speak for them in any capacity or in any way.

But I would walk 500 miles
And I would walk 500 more
Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles
To fall down at your door
The Proclaimers

Ok, I haven’t quite walked 500 miles, though a few days it’s felt like it. But I have reached sort of a milestone. I’ve worked over 500 hours as a tech in the Emergency Department. The PA programs I’m looking at require some sort of minimum number of “patient contact hours”. One only requires 750. The primary programs I’m looking at require 1000 hours. This has been the biggest single worry I’ve had in meeting my prerequisites. While there are a number of classes I need to take (and I’m almost done with those), this is the one that would take the most amount of time and was the hardest to line up.

But here I am, at the end of January and I’ve hit the half-way mark. This means that I’ll be well on my way to hitting the 1000 hours long before applications are due. So that’s good.

But, there’s more than that. Honestly, I’m loving it. Yeah, there’s a lot not to love. There’s cleaning up after patients. There’s being stuck in a zone with very little happening. One can get tired of doing their 20th EKG of the day and 17 nasal swab. But overall, I’m really liking it. And I think I’m getting better at it. I even “gave an order to a doctor” the other week.

Ok, let me be clear. Techs really don’t “give orders” to anyone. Sure we can ask another tech for help or even ask a nurse for help. But typically we’re the one being asked to do things. And we have no medical authority to “put orders into the system.” That said, we’re often closer to the patients and what’s going on with them than the doctors. This makes sense. We see the details, they see the big picture.

In this case though, several of us, including one of the residents, were cleaning up a patient that soiled herself. As I wiped, I noted she was raw and said she couldn’t feel when she was urinating, which meant she’d wet herself again without warning. This would only make things worse for her. When we were done, I turned to the resident and said, “I think you need to put in an order for a Foley (catheter).”

“Oh, you think so?”

“Yes, she can’t tell when she needs to urinate and ends up urinating without warning which ends up getting her skin irritated.”

“Ok.”

Sure enough about 30 minutes later a nurse was putting in a Foley.

I’ve said we often do the scut work. Which is true, and a few people have thought that I was saying that as a complaint. It’s not. It’s an observation. We’re doing the little stuff that needs to be done that the nurses and doctors don’t have time to do or often won’t notice. That said, actually they often do notice. A nurse will go in to do something and see the well stocked IV cart and thank one of us. Or they’ll ask for something and we’ll already have it in our hand, knowing they’ll need it. Again we’re thanked.

Last night for example, I spent probably close to two hours restocking IV cabinets. I’m not sure the last time that day they had been restocked, but some were pretty barren. When I was done, it felt good knowing that the next time a nurse went into the room to start an IV or do some other procedure, they’d have the tools they needed right there.

Then of course, there’s the big stuff. Helping out with a stroke page or a “leveled” trauma. This is where the experience comes in and I’m definitely 500 hours more experienced than I was just over three months ago. I still don’t have my “red badge” so I can work trauma’s on my own, but I’m getting the experience. And it feels good.

All this is a means to an end, getting the required hours to apply to PA school. But it’s also been great. I’m very grateful I’m getting the experience in an ED where my day can vary from restocking carts to handling not one, but two trauma patients in the same evening. And that was just one shift. In other shifts I’ve helped with multiple traumas.

Hopefully not just the quantity of hours, but the quality of the work will help my application. But no matter what, I’m still enjoy it.

Disclaimer: my works do not in any way reflect my Standard Disclaimer: my writings do not reflect the views of my employer, the Albany Medical Health System. In addition, any errors in the above descriptions are my own and nothing here should be taken as medical expertise or advice.