I feel stupid

[peeadude]

A month into my job and i feel stupid. I dont think my school prepared me well. :sad::-_-::sweat:

[rcdavis]

THIS IS NORMAL.

 

And to a great degree is directly related to the amount of true pre education health care experience (or not) that you had.

 

Assuming that the school taught you well enough to have passed the PANCE, then you have at least the minimum knowledge base to start on the next 20-30 years of your life, all of them learning.

 

NONE of us felt prepared going into our first job... ALL of us spent the first 3-5 years reazding nightly about what we ghad seen and earned that day, about the best way to appraoch what we did, and began to develope an "experience library" that gave us an expanding knowledge base on which to draw in future cases.

 

THIS is why the first job is so critical, and that the best jjob is one where you can be teamed with your SP and learn both the ins and out of his speciality and how he likes things done... "his way". later, once you have mastered that, then you might develope "your way" based on that expanding library we just talked about.

 

MAKE NO MISTAKE, you ARE dangerous right now. The only saving grace that you have is that you know how dangerous and truely ill prepared to be solo you are. That is what will drive you to become better.

 

When I was a NEWBIE i was dumb too. It took me awhile to realize tyhat I'd actually be well trained, and that my professors hadn't made a huge mistake turning me loose on the world. I learned to trust my instincts (I didn't know anything!!), To trust my peers (senior PAs and to be absolutely brutally honest with my SPs about what I felt I could and could not do, what I felt I needed to work on or not.

 

Slowly but surely, I evolved into a damn good PA, one that the local communtiy comes to for answers more often thannot.

 

This will probaby happen with you if you just take your fear/ insecurity and use it as a starting point to self education learning and maturing.

 

 

One subject/ patient at a time. one patient a day, read. study, learn,

good luck.

 

davis

[rudypa]

Nice pep talk rcdavis!!

 

Seriously, keep your head up! Residents feel the same way you do! You're not alone in the least.

[jwells78]

be absolutely brutally honest with my SPs about what I felt I could and could not do, what I felt I needed to work on or not

 

Peeadude- I've been working in the ER for 10 years as a nurse; now six months as a PA-C... The first couple months I was SCARED to go to work because the pace is fast and everything about the job is demanding; I felt similarly- like: "How come I never learned that? Am I truly a conehead? Did my school fail me?"

 

Like RC said, I think this is the normal way of things. You're not expected to know everything. Keep your head up, know what you DONT know, ask questions, tuck away the pearls, and hang on brother- it's a hell of a ride!

 

J

[JFarnsworth]

I agree with rc, this is normal, and I think it's good that you feel this way. Once you get arrogant the roof comes down on you. Learn as much as you can. You will sort of always be a student. The best providers I know are humble and open to learning all the time. It comes with the field.

And BTW, I still feel totally inadequate and ignorant. I realize that my educational foundation was really good, but it's a whole new ballgame once you are out there. Don't get discouraged, you are on the right path to being great, grasshopper.

[Iain1028]

Normal......

 

Normal.....

 

We are all (except PA residents) OJTs in reality.

[marilynpac]

Yes, the theory vs the reality collide, and they collide hard.....

[brookspa]

youget up you go to woek, you do your best every day you go home...every dayyou get back up go to work again and again and again. its what we do..every day.

[LESH]

schools just want our money

 

WTH is that supposed to mean and what relevance does it have to this thread?

[annabug]

WTH is that supposed to mean and what relevance does it have to this thread?

 

Code Brown is a troll.

[LESH]

Code Brown is a troll.

 

Thank you annabug I guess they got the response they wanted from me.

[Blessings!!]

Code br I believe u r not interested in PA profession. Why don't you leave this forum? You are annoying and anti-social personality. How come you show negative emotions all the time - you are only hurting yourself not us. Now I understand why you pick ur login name codebrown!!

[katana]

I'm a month into my first job out of school and I feel the same way. Its not that school didn't prepare me well or that I had a lack of experience before school, its just that everything is an adjustment and medicine is extremely complicated work. When starting out, you're not only trying to do the best you can to learn to treat your patients, you're also learning how to use the hospital computer system, find the appropriate people to help with routine tasks, learn where things are in the hospital, figure out how to post cases to the OR, etc. Just the day to day administrative stuff is new. Plus nobody knows you and you haven't built up any trust yet. As a student, your potential to screw things up is pretty minimal. As a new PA, your likelihood of screwing things up is pretty high even if you're doing your best to be diligent in your work. I work for a very demanding surgeon, and two PAs before me have quit within their first couple months on the job. Every day somebody jokes around with me asking if I'm thinking of quitting yet. I leave every evening feeling pretty awful about myself, but I'm doing the best I can to pull it together, toughen up and go back. One of the surgical PAs with thirty years experience at my hospital told me to expect to feel this way for at least six months. As for getting yelled at by the surgeon, he said if he quit every time that happened, he'd have been working at Jiffy Lube a long time ago. Nobody gets into PA school and graduates by setting low standards and expectations for themselves. We're our own worst critics, and I believe that's why its so difficult in the beginning.

[LESH]

Well said Katana.

[jmj11]

You know, and I think others have said this in other ways, PA school does what it suppose to do. It gives us a good foundation on which to build.

 

Medical science (and art) is extremely complex these days. Each of us could do all the work of an MD in the 1930s (or 50s) in our sleep. But the knowledge is now at least 50 fold what it was in the early part of last century.

 

OTJT is our residency. Fortunately we get paid for it. I've been an advocate for more PA independence and some (especially physicians) are outraged. But, they don't understand what I'm saying.

 

A new PA graduate (or NP graduate) is nowhere near as competent as an MD who has finished medical school and a residency program. I'm totally against independence for PA or NPs for at least their first decade of OTJT. It scares me when NPs (with DNPs, which has a lot of nursing theory classes) demands equal footing to an MD, with total independence. PAs should never seek that.

 

However, if a PA has worked hard in one field, be it family practice or a specialty like me, for at least a decade, their competence is much higher and so should their ability to be more independent.

 

Even though I've been a PA for 28 years, if I were to move into a novice specialty, I would equality feel like an idiot.

[browndog]

Agreed.

 

Oh, and the whole DNP deal could have been great if the powers that be had put together a clinical based program with a built in residency. Instead we get more BSN (bullsh@@ nursing) theory classes. I just don't understand how they screwed this thing up so completely. Uggh.

[Chica724]

Yeah I felt the same way in the first few months of my job. Nothing, not even graduating from a great school or a ton of previous healthcare experience, could have prepared me for such a specialized field unless it was a residency in it. I didn't begin to finally feel like I knew what I was doing until about 5-6 months into it. When I did my elective rotation in cv surgery, one of the PAs also told me that it took her 6 months. I kept trying to remind myself that my SP has had 6 years of post-grad education and then 6 years of experience on top of that and that I could never really ever compare myself to him. Just have patience and faith in yourself.

[Guest cabkrun]

Agreed.

 

Oh, and the whole DNP deal could have been great if the powers that be had put together a clinical based program with a built in residency. Instead we get more BSN (bullsh@@ nursing) theory classes. I just don't understand how they screwed this thing up so completely. Uggh.

 

Same thing happening with the DPT. A friend of mine is a DPT, and the D part of it was papers and theory. She got out and was still scared to death to touch patients.

[ventana]

This is one of the biggest difference (that I see) with MD/DO training and every other profession out there.

 

MD/DO have three-ten years of OJT - called residency - and they are a lot less scared to touch patients but the news flash is that they too are scared when they first start..... was in Radiology when a new doc came on board. He was a doc and had the Doc mentality of not being able to learn from a PA - that after about 3 screw ups he realized that he was book smarter but not applied smarter and that I was a resource he could use to do his job better. Ended up going well in the long run but the point of this is to say that everyone feels the same.

 

 

Not to hijack the thread but I do think there needs to be more mentoring in the medical fields (all of the them) so the young guns can learn from the rusty old ones that have seen and tried most things..... I love talkin shop with older doc's about interesting cases as it is amazing to try to learn from their experiences.... too bad the whole medical field is focused on production right now....

 

 

I took '1' year to learn medicine as a new grad - 4 years latter !! I felt like I had a handle on it - that is just normal so enjoy the ride and learn as much as you can and don't kill anyone.

[andohert]

peeadude- I'm 4 months in and feel at least somewhat dumb every single day. My SP has taught me a ton, and it's just the beginning. I have gotten to the point where I feel pretty good in my daily routine, and have had some "hey, I nailed that one" moments. Those moments are usually soon followed by a humbling experience, just to keep it balanced...

 

Katana- you too, huh? I always imagine how I'll feel in 10 years, and will value having a tough boss. 1 day at a time, double check every task!

[starlitez7]

oh my...this thread scared me a bit. lol

[meaux]

I am sure I will chime in on this thread again in about a month or 2, as my trial by fire begins Monday in the ER. For what its worth though, I am nervous as hell, and expect it to be a bumpy take-off.

[HEENT]

Wrong account...