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Sounds like all you've got is personal attacks with no ability to discuss actual issues without getting butthurt. The millenials may be the ones who save the world, but it certainly won't be this guy. McClane- put on your big-boy pants and start a thread on whatever issue you want to discuss. But remember, the Internet doesn't have the homogeneity of far-left ideologies you have been surrounded by in your academic career. Welcome to the REAL world, and REAL diversity. If you don't melt from the heat then you may learn how TRUE diversity actually does make us stronger.

Most folks have said that the just completed AAPA elections were the most significant in years for setting the direction for the future of the profession. I certainly agree. With all that is in play about the future of our profession I was really struck by how a very small number of folks voted - and how those few who did likely have significantly influenced our future. According to the best data I can get quickly, there are over 115,000 PA's in the US. This is from the NCCPA, so it's only PA's that have their certification and the data is from 2016, so the total is certainly higher. According to the AAPA report, there were 38,745 PA's eligible to vote in the election. That's 33% of NCPPA's total, or less than 1/3 of the total PA's in the US. Only 3,406 ballots were cast, or less than 9% of the total eligible, or less than 3% of the total PA's in the US. So, those of us who voted really got our voices heard. The hard work is ahead: getting the states and various federal agencies to change laws and rules to bring OTP into broad fruition. Those of us who were energized enough to vote need to work to make that happen - and to get many more PA's involved in those efforts.

This is my 10th year as a PA and my first time voting in AAPA elections. I've been a member off and on over the years, mostly using it for the CME's. Until last year I was completely unaware of the issues our profession is facing. I had been existing in a happy bubble thinking I hit the job lottery by becoming a PA (I still think that). I always felt I had good job security, fair pay, and enjoyed great relationships with my SP's with plenty of autonomy and support. Then I got an email from AAPA asking me to participate in a survey about OTP. I have to admit that I was extremely hesitant about it when I first read the proposals. I had the attitude that if it isn't broken, why fix it? I had no idea how broken things were. I started doing research, found this forum and other resources, and had my eyes opened to the long list of issues we are facing as a profession. Since then I've faced some problems in my current practice which has led me to start looking at the job market in my area- I found it to be far more saturated than it was 10 years ago and w/ job postings geared mostly towards NP's. My happy bubble has burst but at least I wasn't completely blindsided. We talk a lot on this forum about a title change and educating the public about our profession, but I think there are still a lot of PA's that need educating too. I was one of them until recently.

We sure spiraled off topic on this one. I began this thread remarking on how few of the PA's in this country voted in the election that put folks in the leadership of our 1 national organization - folks who are much more willing to push for the advancement of our scope of practice than those there before. We can cite history, detour into political arguments, talk about generational differences, or anything else. Still, change will only come with changes to state and federal laws and rules. Making that change will require influencing the law and rule makers. That will require time, effort, and money. As Dave said, now is the time to start making those changes. There's lots of work to be done. How about each of us pick a piece, whether it's through AAPA, state organizations, PAFT, pushing on NCCPA, direct contact with legislators, or contributing time or money and contributing to making change?

Dave - thank you for posting here, and a huge thank you for all of your work advancing the PA profession. A few questions for you, whether you want to speak for your self or for the AAPA (come July). 1: We all agree with getting rid of useless legislative/regulatory burdens. PAs shouldn't have bureaucrats mandating chart reviews, co-signatures, maximum PA to Doc ratios, etc. But, with OTP/FPAR/whatever you call it, how do we draw a legislative line of independence for a profession that allows entrants to have only 2 years of medical education, yet allows providers to easily change between specialties? There are some very "independent" PAs on these boards and elsewhere, but what about the 24 year old brilliant young woman who has never been outside of academia (who is becoming closer and closer to the 'typical' new PA grad)...should she have "independence"? Are we going to push for legislative restrictions on new grads, but becoming "independent" after "X" number of years of practice? What about our ability to change specialties? I am very independent in the ED, but if we legislate that independence, would I be able to then go into family practice with the same independence? (The answer to that should be a resounding NO!). What about the orthopedic surgery PA or the CT surgery PA....what does "independence" look like for them? I take a lot of heat on these boards for not going along with OTP/FPAR, but it's because I just can't see what the end product actually looks like. We certainly don't need another "we need to pass the bill to see what's in the bill" moment. 2: Are you going to keep AAPA above the deep political divisions in our country and focus on our PROFESSION instead of being drug into the mud by extremists on the left or right? In the past, the AAPA has made it pretty clearly known they do not want to associate with people who have conservative values (the shaming of Dr. Ben Carson and Carol James is the grossest of examples), which told me they didn't want me as a member either. 3: We need a national certification exam, and in my opinion we should recertify the same way as physicians. That being said, the NCCPA has seemingly gone off the rails beginning with the PI/SA requirements and now fighting AGAINST legislation which expands our practice. The AAPA challenged them and seemingly brought them back into alignment with the needs of the profession, but how do you think we can fix the inherent problems with NCCPA that allowed them to go off the rails in the first place? 4: What should the AAPA do, if anything, about the rapid expansion of PA programs in the past 6 years (or so)? Lots of anecdotes about PA education becoming watered down. Add to that the decreasing focus of (actual) patient care experience and I'm concerned that we are lowering our standards too much. Not sure you can answer these until you're in the hot-seat, or would be willing to answer them in a public forum...but these are questions I have for you. Again, huge thanks for all that you have done for the profession, and congrats on the election! -Boats

Hi My Colleagues: Firstly, let me say thank you to all that supported my candidacy. A serious thank you. I ran because I was at the end of my career and still had the desire to give something back to my profession. It has given me much although I never really asked for anyting. That's what happens when you get involved. For those of you that really want change, get off your backsides and let's make it happen. When the NPs (who I like BTW,) have 42 states with full practice and we have none, don't blame me or the AAPA-blame us all. Each and every one of us. Personally I have been talking about all of us working towards OTP (remember FPAR) for years. I have been talking about a title that does more harm than good for years. It's time to come together and work politically harder than we have ever worked before. For those that do not want to join the AAPA, please join. I can tell you things have changed from years ago. Is it perfect-no. Do you have responsive leadership that wants to move the profession ahead-yes. So come on, write the check and more than that, become someone who is involved. Write, talk, let your leaders know how you feel. Come up with SOLUTIONS. Especially let your state leaders and delegates know your feelings. I'll always listen for sure, but not to some self-serving stuff that gets us nowhere. Those days are over, it's time to start working! Please, get involved! And again, thanks." Dave Mittman, PA, DFAAPA NOT THE OPINION OF THE AAPA, JUST ME.

After the run of disingenuous articles I figured I would post this article from MedScape. Its actually pretty decent. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/895312?nlid=121968_429&src=WNL_mdplsfeat_180424_mscpedit_fmed&uac=179069PK&spon=34&impID=1615392&faf=1

So enlighten us with your own political views instead of whining. In other words, man up, you condesceding oaf! What other "bars" are you comparing this to, sport? The Huddle (with its censorship)? Maybe you should go check out SDN sometime if you want to see what toxic really is. If someplace else is better for you and your delicate sensitivities, be our guest to leave. But please realize, life is a contact sport.

There was never a time when I was in college where a college administration would have tolerated a group of students disrupting a speaker. Much less destroying property and driving speakers from campus. At my particular school I would have been summarily expelled for such activities. Our younger generation preaches tolerance, but they then ignore, villianize and shout down opposing viewpoints. George Orwell couldn't have written it better.

I applied to this program, and then withdrew after I discovered that it is Yale partially in name only. Yale outsources a lot of the administration and management to a FOR PROFIT company called 2U. This is a company is leading the charge in creating online programs at every school imaginable. They are powering the 21 month FNP program at USC as well. Philosophically, I am opposed to expanding class sizes through online and distance options in apparent effort to increase the amount of people paying tuition. How is it that other PA programs require you to be in physically present in anatomy lab, physical exam skills, procedure skills, in classroom for lecture and tests, nearly every weekday, but at Yale you can get away with flying to campus for a couple of weeks in the didactic year for "on campus immersions" and get the *same* education?

I am for OTP and can see how it can be adaptable in all situations, but how about we focus on what NPs do for their independence. I think it should start with Family Medicine and then go into other specialties as we figure it out and fix the kinks. My question is what are those NPs doing in the independent states? What specialties are they working in? Is it just Family Medicine or Peds, womens health , etc...What does this look like and we can mirror off of it/make our changes to it. @Boatswain2PA: your comment of "that allows entrants to have only 2 years of medical education" is not completely true. As this makes "us" look like we have 1/2 the education of a MD/DO, which is not true. We go to school for 3 academic years worth of education (masters level PA schools) so 2/3 of medical school in 1/2 the time thing... Most PA schools are in their seat 100 weeks while most medical schools they are in their seat 140-150 weeks (on average) which is not twice as much as us...around 1 years of actual academic work. So I think we need to let the layman person understand how much education we actually get/do as this will help them understand why we think we deserve OTP. Overall, I agree with you Boat. We can make changes for the best of OUR profession. I am excited about the future!

I think there is always a lot of 'grass is greener' type posts. I see on this thread many people say to do MD. When people ask this same question on a physician forum, you get a lot of ('you should do finance or investment banking instead'). I've been in finance, it's pretty shitty. But they don't know that. Everyone thinks everyone else has it great.

I'm afraid your examples are only taking us farther afield than Mcclane's. He's said his peace, it seems, so let's not ratchet up the rhetoric further, please.

we spent an entire 2 terms on A+P dissections and an entire semester on the PE course. we spent a week just on the neuro exam. The history course was also an entire semester of taking histories from real patients in the affiliated hospital and doing huge write ups. sorry, this sounds like an NP program.

This illustrates one of my most serious concerns about trying to make progress in anything in our society. This entire rising generation can't tolerate dissenting viewpoints. If someone says something they don't like, they are not being disenfranchised - they are disenfranchizing themself. Go ahead - for fun some time, find a group of young people and start talking to them about a viewpoint you know will be unpopular (pretend to take on that viewpoint is you have to). If you expect reasoned discussion, you will be sorely disappointed. You will be met with curses, shouting, chanting and be called every kind of "phobe." There is no insight, logic, consideration or tolerance. There are people on here who I deeply diasagree with at times. I don't intend to scare them away, and they sure as hell won't scare me away. This forum gets slightly heated now and again, but it has been overwhelingly professional. If things said on this forum hurt peoples' delicate feelings, I hate to say it but they are too soft to work in medicine.

Well we can no longer educate them that PAs are required to attend in-class training. We also can no longer educate them that PAs are required to have a certain amount of experience before entering the profession. But yes, I agree, we do need to educate them about how we have much higher standards than NP education, and we have far more training hours than NPs, but with <3% of PAs voting in their own election, and hardly any PAs contributing money to their own PAC I don't see any legitimate education going on in the near future. Unlike our NP counterparts who are spending tons of $$$ to support their own profession, and to suppress the fact of their much lower standards in education. My main point is that PAs can't afford what NPs can afford as far as lower perceived standards in education.

Welcome everyone, With CASPA opening tomorrow I thought I would get this thread started so that any applicants have a place for their questions and to communicate with one another. The University of Florida PA program is a highly regarded and long standing. It also benefits from its close association with UF’s medical school and from those resources. From my own experience visiting the campus it was amazing. If you are offered an interview I would strongly encourage you to take the opportunity to see what UF has to offer. There are many alumni and current students who frequent this forum and may be able to help answer questions. GreatChecko in the past has offered excellent information and hopefully will stick around for this cycle as well. I’ve compiled a short list of common questions from last cycle’s thread that should still be helpful for this year’s applicants too. (Keep that in mind, this information is based on last year’s thread and is not official or endorsed by UF in any way shape or form). 1 – Apply early! UF gives preference for interview selection to applicants who submit their application and all supporting materials before August 1st. (Source) 2 – Based on last year’s thread, those who do apply early have their applications placed in secondary review more quickly and are offered interviews more quickly; as the applications start rolling in, the process slows down considerably. 3 – Application submission confirmation, initial review, and secondary review progress are notified via email. Interviews are offered via a phone call and email and seem to begin around late June and early July all the way into the fall. 4 – If you are offered an interview, the timing isn’t suppose to matter, there are enough seats available for everyone being interviewed to be accepted. Interviews begin late August to early September and are suppose to end around late November, but last cycle were stretched into December due to hurricane delays. 5 – Rejections w/o interview are sent via email and may be at any time during the application cycle. After the interviews you may be notified of acceptance anywhere from the same week that you interviewed until mid December when “final decisions” are made and apparently the majority of acceptances are sent out (so if you don’t hear back right away, don’t panic!). It is also my understanding that mid December is when rejections after having an interview are sent out. 6 – If you are offered an interview, part of it includes an informal dinner with students (no faculty). I would strongly encourage attending as you get the chance to speak with students candidly and it also helps ease the nerves some before the actual interviews the next day. 7 – Last cycle, the whole interview process was potentially 3 days long (Mon-Wed). The first day is a tour and orientation, and the second and third days are the proper interviews. Interviewees are asked their preference for the interview on Tues or Wed. Out of town interviewees are given preference for Tues interviews. So you may only be there Mon and Tues. If you ask for a Wed interview, then you have a day off to explore Gainesville and tour the whole UF campus if you like. Once your interview is completed, you are free to go. I hope that all helped and didn’t go overboard too much! Good luck to all the applicants and re-applicants! UF School of Physician Assistant Studies: https://pap.med.ufl.edu/ Florida Pre-PA FaceBook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/FLPrePA/ P.S. If it becomes apparent that any of the information I provided is no longer accurate, please PM me and I'll remove it, thanks.

Not overboard at all! That's pretty much everything :) I cannot stress how helpful applying early is. Also, reapplicants are seen positively, so keep positive and work on continuous improvement! All the best everyone!

So first thing's first....Hey everyone! My last post on this site was almost 10 years ago! I think I first posted on here when I was 23, single, and wondering where life would take me. Now I'm 35, married and the father to a 13 mo. boy! Alright, enough of playing catch up lets get to the crux of the situation: So for the last 10 years I have been working in Orthopedics and Sports Medicine. I work coverage for HS football games as well as coverage for FIU athletics since my supervising physician is the team doc. I also teach pharmacology to the Athletic Training Program and am the guest Ortho Lecturer for the Physician Assistant Program at FIU. Now I'm very happy and fulfilled with what I'm doing I can't help but start thinking about what's next. Right now I've been toying around with two avenues: Administration or Education. If I go the administration route I would likely go back to school for a MBA to expand my options. Now while administration does offer a pretty nice schedule I don't know if my personality is built for it. There also aren't that many PA's in administrative roles in my current location. We just recently established "supervisor PAs" which fulfill a part time Administration role. Any PA's here make the move to administration? Pluses and minuses? Education seems like the more logical route for me since I have been involved in education in some way or another since I was in college. I was going to reach out to the PA school that I currently teach at and see about getting more involved with the program. Although looking at the salaries of those in the PA program they clearly took a pay cut to teach but I'm assuming the schedule is also much nicer and you can also do some weekend shifts to supplement. A local private university (University of Miami, my Alma mater) currently doesn't have a PA program and not sure if they will but I would love to put myself into a position that if they did open I could be a strong candidate for Faculty or Clinical/Didactic Director. Are there any additional classes/courses I should pursue if I want to go this route? Would a PHD help? Does it matter? Sorry for the random post but not sure where else to post it. I'm sure a Moderator can move the post around to the more appropriate place if need be. Either way it feels good to be back! I hope to be more involved in the forum and throw my "now veteran" 0.02$ in the ring now and again! Thanks again! Phil

I have some grouchy coworkers, but nothing like what physicians experience: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-being-a-doctor-became-the-most-miserable-profession Going into medicine everyone is told how utterly important, special and elite they are. As pre-meds they they participate in a horrifying rat race climbing over each other to get into med school. They then repeat that rat race to get into a choice residency. It's all me, me me. It's like the system was designed for the very purpose of creating terrible human beings. Then they get out into practice and find to their horror the effort was not worth it, "autonomy" is an illusion, and that they are a little cog on a corporate wheel. PA school there's a rat race to get in, and an ongoing struggle for respect. But I've never had to talk a colleague off a ledge. Mostly we just bitch about the terrible interpersonal skills of our supervisors.

My thoughts have been clearly made on online. To add to that - we simply have TOO MANY PA programs and are flooding the market and along the line - the control, the quality, the oversight and the product will suffer. Online will speed that up. We already have a problem getting teaching sites for programs that have been around a long long time. Corporate medicine is blocking shadowing, filtering students despite their "mission statements" and folks are just too busy, too production conscious and too litigation weary to handle students. We have MD students, DO students, residents of all flavors, PA students, NP, PharmD and everyone else looking for sites and fewer and fewer proctors by choice or by policy. I think online should not be done and the programs we have need a good thorough evaluation as to their ability to provide the education as it was designed and make that work before adding any more bells and whistles. Again, my old 2 cents.

I received the call this afternoon and have been ACCEPTED!!! Looking forward to meeting everyone.

Those numbers are very sad. But it's very high for other healthcare professionals too. I don't think a PA working 15 shifts a month in the ED is necessarily at a lower risk of stress, burnout or depression compared a MD working the same hours? There's a lot of factors - stress obvously but also the expectation of having to be perfect, being "on" all the time, not being able to take time for yourself, etc. I haven't seen the numbers for PAs but I'm sure all of us in this field are at very high risk of things like depression.

Nothing uncivil about it. Just trying to judge how someone's worldview was shaped. By most available measures, I was fairly bright when I was in PA school, but I was a complete fool compared to now. If someone posts here based on their "experience" but they have never: Paid taxes Made a car payment Moved from parents' home Dealt with hospital administrators Laid hands on a patient Paid rent/mortgage, etc, etc, etc. I need to premedicate with an extra grain of salt.

I was an EMT-I and had a year to kill and got my paramedic card at that time. It was a 12 month long evening unit day class (1 or 2 long evenings each week, plus lots of clinical time). Its also was not for college credit and I kept my day job (a life theme of mine until PA school started.) It has never been a career for me but a major hobby. I now have 32 years and counting in volunteer and parttime EMS (18 when I entered PA school in 2004.) I would not recommend spending a lot of time or money on it and the career is not a great fallback if you don’t get into PA school. The patient care experience and the sense of improvisation is a wonderful life skill, however. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Maybe they don't get offended "more easily" than any other time, but people today certainly take their offended "status" to new levels, such as shouting down those who they don't agree with, requiring "safe spaces", etc, etc, ad nauseum. While it's certainly not the majority of millennials, it's the vocal minority (highlighted by the leftist media) who have created a mentality of "victimhood". For example, McClane cries about being disinfranchised because some people here don't share his/her world view, thus setting him/herself up as a "victim." Compare this to people who were ACTUALLY disinfranchised through the threat or actual use of force by southern Democrats.... Disinfranchisement to McClane: People don't disagree with me so therefore I'm a victim....I need a safe space! Disinfranchisement to blacks in the Democrat controlled South: They hung my uncle from the tree in his front yard, burned a cross in my front yard, passed laws making it illegal for me to own a firearm, and then passed laws that actually difficult for me to vote. Big difference. Agreed with the general pessimism, but that doesn't mean there isn't some truth to the generalizations across the generations.

This is precisely my fear with online PA education. I have no doubts Yale will dump the resources into this program to do it right, and that they will attract high quality students who will succeed and make it work. But if this precedent picks up steam in PA education I fear that other schools won't have the same resources to commit, and will instead see this as a way to generate increased tuition with minimal investment and potentially slipping standards (à la NP education). That, plus the perception of it in the medical community, is why I am against the PA educational model moving online.

Full Disclosure: I am a Yale graduate and have opposed the implementation of this program from the beginning. This is primarily for political reasons. That being said... When I was in Hope 203, all I did, for 4 out of 5 days a week, was day trade. I paid attention occasionally to learn what I thought was important but otherwise, I was more concerned about stock market analysis, getting in on morning trades, getting home in time for late day trades, studying occasionally before the weekly Thursday test, and managing to work 24-40 hours a week on a busy ALS rig either in CT or back in Massachusetts. Yet somehow, I still managed to get the "Yale" experience necessary to kick the crap out of my rotations, smoke many a medical school student, and work in what is perhaps one of the best EM environments in the country. Since leaving Yale, I have sat on their admissions board, know how they select candidates, understand the ethos that is Yale, and know what they look for in students. I've also been president of my national organization, have taught at several other schools, have served as core faculty in another program in Boston, and still lecture occasionally when I feel like it. If anyone really thinks this is lowering standards, you are not likely familiar with the student base that Yale pursues. When this cadre of graduates, their diplomas are not going to say "Yale Online School of Medicine, Physician Associate Program." And no one on the other side of the hiring table is really going to care if they took their didactic component partially online in rural Colorado or New Haven, CT. The School of Medicine at Yale treats the PA program and the Medical program quite differently; medical students are not graded, attendance has never been mandatory for any class, etc. It is the opposite for PAs as ALL administrators and faculty are familiar with the condensed nature of the material that the PAs are learning compared to the medical student colleagues. I'd argue this is not lost on the logistical implementation of the didactic component at Yale. By its very nature, PAs were, and continue to be, born out the necessity of disruptive innovation, and this is the next logical step. The type of student Yale is looking for is not going to change, sans their ability to be even more flexible than what they require of an "on-campus" student, while working out the logistical kinks that are bound to occur. But 5 years from now, when this group is into their 2nd jobs, no one is going to care that they learned the various subtypes of AML by hearing it or reading about it on a computer screen from their desk at home rather than watching one of the oncologists walk over from 300 Cedar Street. Because it doesn't matter. The fire hydrant is the fire hydrant. It only matters how you choose to drink water from it. Not where you are sitting when you decide to stick your face in the stream. G

As the saying goes, don't let the door hit you in the glutes on the way out...

People have all kinds of reasons for not doing things. Reasons for not doing things are also known as excuses. Look at the portion of your reply that you underlined. The definition of "willing" is very closely tied to the definition of "committed." Thus it makes a ton of logical sense. Being willing to move is demonstrative of commitment, and those are the people we are looking for. We are *not* looking for people who want to take the easiest route through PA school that they can find. I understand that there are barriers to PA education and I'm telling you that I want people taking care of my family who fought tooth and nail to break those barriers down and who made a sacrifice to be privileged to practice medicine. I do not want someone taking care of my kids who picked the PA route because it's lucrative and because he had easy access to the program. I don't want the PA who sailed her way through rotations primarily shadowing and just getting passing grades. Do you? And absolutely moving = skin in the game. How could it not be the equivalent? You'll note that I did not say that "not moving = no skin in the game." Not having to move and uproot your life and define yourself by the curriculum you want to take means you have less skin in the game. Less skin in the game means less value and less willingness to sacrifice to get the job done. Andrew

My program required 100% butt-in-seat attendance, so that wasn't an option for me.

Well, I think saying that these folks "literally have no options for career advancement" is a little overdramatic ... because these folks do have options. My class is full of people who have similar hardships. Life put an obstacle in front of them, and they figured out a way to tackle it. Frequently, it has involved sacrifices... selling of houses, being geographic bachelors, applying multiple times to the same school, etc.

Ok, called the Medical Quality Assurance Commission today. They have a rather opaque phone tree, but I was able to get to a live human, and thence into another specific person's voicemail. I noted that I had not even received acknowledgement that anyone at the commission had read my complaint yet, gave my phone number and email address. We'll see what happens.

I would probably not do it as if you only ordered SSI or insulin ggt per a protocol then you (most likely) don't have tools/knowledge to be changing/managing patients with diabetes let alone all the other stuff you do in primary care. I will find my other post about what FM medicine provider see on a weekly/monthly basis and edit my post so you can see what I see on a daily basis. These are the most commons and the list if no exhaustive so you would have to be at least familiar with most on the stuff on the list (and familiar to me is understand the patho/pharm/pathology/treatment/work up/management/when to refer/etc.). I do not think having 3 years of PEDs ICU and 6 months of cardiology has prepared to you work ("independent") at a PRN done with very complicated/comorbid patients that most likely have a list of meds 2 pages long...If you were going to do it full time you would be find as you would have mentorship, but with a PRN job you will have zero guidance with every patient meaning it will take you a very long time to learn "FM/IM" at a PRN SNF job. I have been in rural family medicine x 4 years and now just feeling comfortable with the craziness I deal with on a daily basis. " I will tell you what I see on a weekly basis: HTN, DMI/DMII, hyperlipidemia, CHF, A-fib, AAA, carotid stenosis, migraines, depression, bipolar, GAD, SLE, RA, OA, chronic pain in every joint possible, gout, fibro, uti, renal caculi, thyroidism, obesity, tobacco abuse, vertigo, bronchitis, PNA, sinusitis, allergic rhinitis, epistaxis, obstructive and restrictive pulm disease, AOM/swimmers ear, all kinds of DERM (AKs, SKs, SCC, BCC, vitiligo, tinea (all of them), exanthematous rashes, dermatitis), wound care (DM ulcers, arterial/venous ulcers), cerumen impaction, lymes, rocky mountian spotted fever, ehrlichiosis, tularemia, OSA, ingrown toenails, felon, paronychias, herpes zoster, DVTs, fractures, strains/sprains, acl/pcl/mcl/lcl/meniscus tears, PCOS, genetic testing, allergy testing, dehydration, chest pains, afib with rvr, stemi/nonstemi, a-flutter, hypoglycemia, laceration repair, suicidal ideations, IDA, B12/vit d deficiency, rectal bleeding, hemorrhoids, peptic/gastric ulcers, UC/crohn's disease, dental abscesses/thrush. Thats what I have seen this month plus I know I left some out. Read uptodate. Ask questions a lot. P.S. I did not even put down the procedures I do either. Good luck!"

Hey! So it will count towards the pre-req requirements regardless, some schools only care that you made a C or higher whether it was your first attempt or second attempt and some schools average the 2 of them! CASPA just means that it won't do a repeat to replace! Good Luck!!

I am echoing what everyone else said, but sh*t happens. CXR's can be clear as day or clear as mud. I look at tons of CXR's every day (CV Surg) and heck even my attending (31 year surgeon) has missed things. I think Sas said it above where looking for a rib fracture is damn near impossible unless its obvious, well, to add to that, so can a pneumo be damn near impossible to spot on occasion. You did the right thing and tried to contact him.

Okay, thanks for clearing that up for me. Soooo... Disinfranchisement to McClane: I don't like this bar, so I'm a victim! I need to go back to my college bar with it's safe-space. Disinfranchisment to blacks in Democrat controlled South: They hung my uncle from the tree in his front yard, burned a cross in my front yard, passed laws making it illegal for me to own a firearm, and then passed laws laws that made it actually difficult for me to vote. I just don't see the equivalency there, but good on you if you do!

PA Programs are flooding the market? What about the zillion NP programs? No?

Sorry Eric - I have to disagree here. the PA program on campus has a full dissection that is roughly a 1/3 the time of the medical students while covering the same material. The fact that they are even bringing them to campus to do a dissection in the first place is far better than what most programs are doing for those students at traditionally based schools. This dissection sounds similar to what the on-campus students do. And we both know there are no issues with the in-class curriculum... Additionally, the H+P class is 10 classes total for the on-campus class then write-up after write-up after write-up. Mine varied from clinics to the ortho floors at the VA (those were interesting) to standard IM write-ups. No reason this cannot be done elsewhere. All I am seeing on this thread is people complaining about how this will drag down the profession. What will actually drag down the profession is the continued proliferation of crap schools that cannot find clinical sites, force students to do all the legwork, cannot maintain accreditation on a consistent basis, and while going through their initial probationary period for provisional accreditation, fleecing students for as much as they can. This is not the case with this online program. As I stated earlier, I do not support it for political reasons - but as far as content and connections for students: it is well covered. G

Growing up in my career with AAPA - I dutifully paid dues at first and had employers who covered them. I didn't understand many if any of the issues in my younger years and felt detached as though AAPA only represented things happening somewhere else to someone else. I had to let all my memberships expire this past year. My employer doesn't cover them and the ones I wanted to support totaled to over $750 in dues. I couldn't do it out of my personal budget. I still felt AAPA was detached from my experience and not quite on board with my thoughts or desires. That has changed to an extent with OTP. I work federal now and whatever AAPA does really won't affect me much - federal rules usurp all state issues. This is the twilight of my career - 26 yrs in and in a setting where I have a federal retirement and benefits. I operate extremely autonomously and have great support from my docs and admin. I feel insulated. I also feel exhausted after years of proving myself in multiple settings and fighting to be given credit for what PAs CAN DO and DO daily and fight the NP creep of doctorates and pay disparity. It has taken this long to find a job where I am paid equally and well and given the ability to practice to my best limits and expectations. So, I couldn't vote because my membership lapsed. Do I regret it? Somewhat. Going to work and fighting for my patients occupies most of my time now and I enjoy it - doing the right thing. I still support OTP and basically live it where I am. Will do what I can to support others. I wish AAPA and NCCPA would get on board with each other and we had national licensing.

I was attending class 100% of the time for the first 2 months, but like you I simply cannot learn in class. I have learned via PA school that the best way for me to learn is to plug my headphones into my ipad and walk around my house while I study the material. After the first several months I cut attending class to about 50%. Now, I hate to admit that I only attend class if it is required. So I end up going to school about 1 or 2 days a week only for 1 or 2 classes. I will say that my test scores have improved and I am MUCH happier and feel MUCH more prepared for tests.

So here is a thread for those of us planning on attending MCPHS-Worcester starting in January of 2019. I figured it might be best to try and meet some of y'all as soon as possible. Now, talk amongst yourselves....