Physician Associate Studies (Part 1?)
Today is the 15th of June 2021, and I have been feeling pretty reflective recently.
I am almost exactly 5 months into the course, and one month from going home to see my fam.
I am so pleased to be doing a PA course. I really believe in the role - I think it will be so helpful to the NHS, and it is a great option for someone who wants to be a health care practitioner but does not want to do all the years of medical school. As someone with scientific and clinical interests, as well as an enjoyment of interaction with people, this course allows me to be part of a new (ish - 10-15 years in the UK) occupation in our health care system, learn a lot about the human body and how it works, and put that information into practice.
That being said, PA school is not for the faint-hearted. I'm not writing this blog post for any specific reason, but when I was applying to universities, I googled a lot to look for first-hand experiences and I didn't really find many. So I thought I would share some experience. Maybe someone somewhere will find this useful.
Sorry if there isn't much structure to this. I am just writing my thoughts as they come to me. And obviously, this post is a huge deviation from the blog's main subject matter/point.
firstly, I want to talk about universities.
Please, I beg of you. Before you make a choice of university, try and find out what the students think of their experience. It is true that the grass is always greener - I applied to six universities and wistfully think about some of my other applications - but my experience has been incredibly challenging. PA is hard enough as it is (please do not underestimate that fact) but my course has been very disorganised and poorly run. We are in Covid times, but my course began almost 9 months into the pandemic, so I don't accept it as an excuse so much now that we are about 15 months in. I receive my timetable in batches of about 5-6 weeks at a time, and the other week we received our timetable for our current block less than a week before we were due to be in person in a session (some us commute quite far so it's good to know further in advance), and found out to our surprise that we had an exam the following week. Unnecessary stress levels.
I chose my university because it has generally a good academic reputation and is very well established. I am not saying the uni itself is bad - some of my coursemates had a great time on their UG course at this same university and have been shocked by the standard of our PG course.
Just try and make sure that you're going somewhere that is going to look after you. Our experience has been that the course is not run well, does not accept criticism, blames us to some extent when we flag up issues and some of the staff are not easy to deal with. Some of them are excellent, don't get me wrong - some of our tutors are great. But some are very difficult. Patronising, rude, passive-aggressive. Etc.
Also, some of the lecture material we have been provided with has been of very poor quality. As our main source of virtual learning, it has been disappointing when we have regularly had to completely abandon what the university provides in favour of youtube teachers (shout out Ninja Nerd Science, Armando, and Sam Webster. Where would I be without you).
I would also like to say that if you can, find out what the source of your teaching will be - if that makes sense. Our course gives us the same teaching as the medics, just in 9 months instead of 2-4 years. And when I say the same teaching as the medics, I mean exactly the same. They get six weeks to learn a system, and we get all of the lectures and tutorials that they did, recorded, in a 2 or 3 week period instead. There aren't really any pros to this arrangement. As PAs, we don't need all of the info that medics get, so we spend a lot of our time wondering how much of what we are learning is unnecessary. It also means that sometimes a lecturer will decide to skip something 'because you'll cover this in 4th year' or 'you covered this in 2nd year', or they'll say 'When you're an FY1' 'when you're a doctor...' - all of this is very frustrating and makes us feel undervalued/ignored as PA students. My understanding is that a lot of other courses provide individual teaching for their PA students. This is much better, IMO.
 |
| fun pic of some suturing I did in Prac procs, just because |
Think also about what you want your course to look like. I am on a course where we cover all of our lecture-based teaching before we do any placements. Any in-person teaching is about practical techniques, such as examination of the cardiovascular system or phlebotomy. I will not go on any placements until all my teaching is finished.
I like this arrangement. Sometimes I think some clinical experience would help me put my academic teaching into context, but all in all, I prefer to get all the knowledge now, especially as that means I shouldn't have to do as much first-time learning alongside placement (that may just be something I'm telling myself though - that's why I put a question mark in the title. It may be that when I get to placements it's still very hard and I write another post to recant this statement. We shall see.)
I would say, I did several very different types of work experience before this course. I saw orthopaedics, surgery, A and E, geriatrics, oncology, radiology, and worked in a care home. This is obviously a lot, and not necessary and a lot of my experience came from one week of a Work Observation Programme that was run by my local university teaching hospital, but it really has helped me. If you can get experience, get experience. Any. It will help you understand the MDT, jargon, how things work structurally in the NHS - it's invaluable really. Insight-wise. I definitely feel that health care experience of any amount has given me an advantage over some of my coursemates. Even just small things that I observed clinically, like what a cannula looks like in someone's hand, make practical procedures easier for those of us that have had more experience.
I want to mention finance. Maybe this is my mistake (ok it definitely is), but I did not realise how little funding there is for this course before I went into the application process. My advice would be to take a year out to work and earn money if you are concerned, and don't have loaded relatives. Because the average course is about £20 grand, just for tuition, and the average government finance is about £18 grand. Providence has put me in a position that means I am just about affording my studies.
It is doable to work alongside the course, but I want to emphasise. PLEASE HEAR ME WHEN I SAY everyone that I know who works alongside, wishes they did not have to. The less stress and commitments you put on yourself, the better. As I said, the course is so incredibly condensed into such a short space of time, and we have very little time off (1 week Easter, 2 weeks summer) before our final 1st year exams in October, that all the time you can spare to study and to take a break for the sake of your mental and physical health, is important.
I think that's everything I want to rant about for now
I just want to finish with a few pieces of advice:
- Do your best to find out about your unis before you pick one, from a student's POV
- Make sure you set yourself a good routine on the course and allow yourself at least one day off a week. Burnout is a very real thing
- stand up for yourself if you think things need to improve
- use your coursemates. You can help each other so much. Especially in a time like now when people are often isolated. You are a team.
- Get Enough Sleep
- as soon as you can figure out the bare bones of the information you need for exams, condense it into something you can easily refer back to. There is not time on a PA course to learn everything once and then learn it all again before exams like a lot of people do in UG. You need to know the information you need to know and do your best to retain it, or sort it into something that helps you keep it. This is what I do, just on Word:
 |
| this is from my renal disorders revision pack. I have one per system |
- use online resources
- question banks such as Quesmed, passmed, geeky quiz are really helpful for exam revision (though they can make you feel intimidated if you don't get every question right - don't worry about that. Its all learning). Zero to Finals is Excellent, and has a really good Instagram page. 12/10.
- I've mentioned some of my favourite youtube teachers earlier. Osmosis, the Noted Anatomist and The Institute of Anatomy are also great. GeekyMedics and Dr Khalid for practical procs
- sites such as Teach Me Anatomy and Kenhub, GeekyMedics, and MedScape are really good for summarising things. Medscape especially is so good for PC, Examination findings etc, though I think its USA based so always check against the NICE Guidlines
- NICE and CKS will be your new best friends in first line treatments and investigations
So. I hope that helps someone out there with a bit more real info on PA experience. I want to re-emphasise that I am so grateful to be doing this course. I am excited to be part of this new role. But it is a tough programme, being made tougher and more demotivating by certain aspects of my experience, and if you can avoid that then I hope this has helped you to do so.
Comments
Post a Comment