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[EMTwannabePA]

My journey in medicine began three years ago on a ski slope in Washington’s Cascade Mountains. I was teaching my first snowboard class - four boys and a girl aged seven to ten. We had just finished merging onto a main slope when a loud shriek forced all of us to stop and turn around. I saw Anika, my only female student, lying motionless in the snow. My clunky snowboard boots and heavy jacket felt non-existent as adrenaline propelled me through the thick snow and up the forty-five degree mountain slope. My mind raced with possibilities, yet I knew there was only one thing I could do in this situation: get help.

 

Thankfully that was not necessary. Anika had narrowly avoided colliding with another skier by performing a controlled fall, only staying on the ground because she was tired. We laughed about it and used the incident as a great learning experience for the other students. Still, I could not stop thinking about what happened. I asked myself, “Am I okay with being helpless in an emergency?”

 

I signed up for an EMT course the next day.

 

Since then I have treated over one thousand patients in the busiest and most vulnerable area of Seattle. Half of the patients I treat are chronically homeless, and another quarter live in low-income housing. The vast majority suffer from addiction, mental illness, or both. Working with these individuals, hearing their stories, and developing relationships with them has inspired me to volunteer with the Downtown Emergency Services Center (DESC), one of the largest homeless shelters and homeless advocates in Seattle. In addition to responding to 911 calls, my ambulance team is a part of Swedish Medical Center’s Neonatal Intensive Care transport team, where we transport a neonate in an isolet along with a team of a nurse, respiratory therapist, and nurse practitioner. We even respond to airfields and helipads to transport critical patients to the ED or directly to the ICU. I am truly blessed to have all of these experiences and opportunities in a profession I love.

 

The experience which has influenced me the most was my first interaction with a PA. Coincidentally it was also my first day in the field. We were called for slight shortness of breath, but en route to the hospital the patient began experiencing flash pulmonary edema and respiratory failure. After transferring care and delivering a short report to the PA, I stuck around to assist with airway treatments. She was administering a nebulizer, reassuring a patient in full freak-out, and asking me remarkably specific and insightful questions about the call - simultaneously. It’s worth mentioning I had never heard of a PA or what they do before this moment. I was in awe. After the patient stabilized, my curiosity was at max capacity. I had to know more about what happened, why it happened, how it happened - everything. She had an answer for it all. Then she asked me a question: “Have you ever thought about becoming a PA?”

 

I signed up for prerequisites the next day.

I didn’t commit to this path blindly.  After researching the profession I was impressed by the decision-making ability and autonomy given to PAs. I saw the remarkable amount of choices and variability an MPAS provides, from emergency medicine and primary care to neurology and even surgery. Most of all, I learned about the potential of the PA profession from pilot programs such as in Mesa, AZ, where a PA is teamed up with a paramedic and dispatched on an ambulance to lower-acuity patients. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was the perfect fit.

Since I made the decision to become a PA I have worked and gone to school full time. It hasn’t been easy, but the lessons I’ve learned have prepared me. My experience as a freelance web developer taught me the discipline, confidence, critical thinking and interpersonal skills needed to assure patients. Snowboarding lessons taught me the patience and empathy necessary to treat even the most difficult and obstinate. Even my time as a cook in a high volume kitchen left me with valuable insights such as how to work as a team and how to perform in a high-stress environment.

If there’s one thing being an EMT has taught me, it’s that there’s a LOT I don’t know. But there’s one thing I do know: I’m ready to learn.

 

[UGoLong]

Great essay!  You are missing a blank line after "I signed up for prerequisites the next day."

 

Best of luck.