 What's up you guys? This is Donna. Welcome back to my channel. So I had an amazing question posed on my previous video and I was like, yo, this is the dopest question ever. I'm going to absolutely answer it on my next video. So that goes to show you guys that I do read your comments, I do read your questions, and I do get inspiration from them. So this video is going to be about is there a glass ceiling really in like the PA career, but more specifically as a trauma surgery PA is what the question was posed. So if you haven't already done so, go ahead and subscribe, like this video, leave some comments, leave some questions, and I will get to them. All right, so I have this question posed to me and it was from Thomas Nichols is what it says. It says, hey, Adana, so I'm an accelerated bachelor's of science, master's of health science degree, and I can't wait to be a PA. But my biggest concern is that there's a sort of ceiling to be a PA that no matter how good or knowledgeable you are, you can't get past. So do you see yourself being able to expand on your skills as a PA in your trauma surgery job? And I was like, what? Like, this is a serious great question because I mean, I think that that's the question that most people kind of have when they're trying to figure out, do I want to be an advanced practice practitioner or do I want to be like an MD or something a little bit more specialized on that route? So I, I'm going to answer this again. This is my opinion. The question was posed to me, not to anybody else. So I'm going to answer it from my opinion. And in my opinion, there's a ceiling to almost anything that you do. It's either a ceiling that you place on yourself or a ceiling that others or the job market may place on you. Okay. And so what I mean by that is, you know, there are people who come to a point in their life where they're like, look, you know, like, I'm doing great. I'm making, you know, enough money for the lifestyle that I have grown accustomed to and that I want to live. And therefore like this is all I'm going to do. There's still opportunity to grow and learn more and get more knowledge and, you know, be bigger than what they are currently, but they are content with where they're at. And so that ceiling for them has like, has capped. And that's it. It's, it's done, right? And then there are others that may want to grow, may want to move further, but, you know, because of where they're at in, in their particular job market, like there is no growing further. That's just kind of what, what you're at, it's done. And so I think with respect to being a trauma PA specifically, again, I'm only a baby PA in this, you guys, like been at this trauma PA thing for only eight months. So I'm speaking off of my limited experience, but I still have a lot to learn. So I'm nowhere to, to having the knowledge or being as knowledgeable as I possibly can. And I feel like I don't see myself getting to that point anywhere or anytime soon. And I don't know if there's ever going to be a point where you've gotten all of the knowledge that you can possibly have to know about trauma and surgery and trauma surgery and acute care surgery to not be valuable because there's always going to be new literature coming out. There's always going to be new procedures coming out that you might want to read up on or learn about because your attending might be using that in the operating room and you want to be helpful. So for me, I don't really see there being a ceiling in terms of the knowledge in my skill set, right? I think that I'm going to continuously hone the skills that I'm learning. Obviously, I have to learn how to do various different lines and use like a chorus versus, you know, like coming in and putting in like a IJ central line or a subclavian or ephemeral or putting in chest tubes and doing all of those like advanced practice skills. I'm constantly going to be refreshing myself and making sure that I'm up to date on that. And so obviously, after I've learned how to do it or become proficient in it, that that learning might be be done for me, but there's still going to be so much more learning that I have to do. And so for me, I don't think that there is a ceiling in the knowledge and the skill set of being a PA. There's going to be something new that has to be learned. However, I do with that being said, you know, I want to like play a little bit of a devil's advocate here. So like if for you, you want to like, I don't know, it'll be the boss and you want to run your own stuff and not have any supervision at all or oversight whatsoever, then maybe being a PA is not for you. And that is the ceiling that you've come to, right? Because at this moment in time, that's not the dynamic of what a PA does, right? We are very much still in collaboration with our physicians. And so with that being said, there's no like, I'm just solely doing this on my own, no physician oversight whatsoever in terms of if I want to own my own business, that has to do with like medically related stuff. Now, there are PA's who own their own business, who own their own clinics. They have partnerships with with physicians and that's and have a collaborating physician with them. And that goes in conjunction with whatever their state may say. But that's again, it's a ceiling that's being placed on them by their state regulators. So there's always going to be some type of ceiling, I guess you could say that is being placed on individuals, but you as the profession grows as time moves as the dynamic of what is needed in healthcare changes, so is the profession. And so is the state of healthcare is going to change, you know, we look like, look at with COVID, we were able to just kind of go wherever like people were quickly like credentialing you and things like that, so that you could practice in other states that had high COVID cases because they needed practitioners. And so that was like a step in the right direction for the PA profession and for advanced practice practitioners in general. So that is like my really kind of Adana E take on it. I think that there is a ceiling based on what you place on yourself or what the, you know, the particular job market may place on you. But I feel like at the end of the day, you kind of get to determine that for the most part, like as a PA, I think that I'm going to continue to be able to learn as a Trump PM going to get knowledge. I'm going to, if I want to go for my doctorate, you know, there's nothing stopping me from that. I can gain as much knowledge as I want in my particular personal life. Also, if I want to start my own business, you know, I can do that. If I've gained or made enough money to where I'm like, you know, I'm comfortable, I don't want to go back to school again for another year to two years, then I don't have to. But it's all based on your ambitions and where you want to be in life. And so this is something that this is like an important question that you really, really, really have to look at because you have to look at all the various different dynamics of where you might work, what state you might work in, what's the regulating body over there, how do they treat their advanced practice practitioners, how do they treat their PAs or MPs, you know, what kind of oversight is needed because all of that will dictate how you practice. And so if you want to actually like have your own stuff going on, you just got to do the research. So again, my two cents, thank you for asking me the question. It's definitely something that I had to think about, you know, when transitioning from, okay, do I want to go to med school and spend all that time in school to become an OBGYN, or do I want to go to PA school and have time with my family and still be able to work in that field if I so choose. And so these are all the things that I wanted to, you know, to process and see if I would be happy there. And so if you don't feel like you would be happy, if you feel like you're going to regret being a PA, or you're going to feel like, you know what, like I've hit this kind of glass ceiling that I cannot move past, or if for whatever reason you're going to feel unfulfilled, then absolutely do not do this, you know, because ultimately at the end of the day, you want to be happy in whatever career choice you choose. All right. Thank you so much for that question. This was, it was an amazing question and I'm glad you asked it. If you guys have any other questions for me, please leave them in the comment section below. If you haven't heard, you know, I did a little shameless plug in there, but I did. We like started a platform, it's called Get That See University or GTCU. So please go check it out at GetThatSeeUniversity.com. Subscribe to the Instagram, it's Get That See University on Instagram and subscribe to my Instagram at AdanaThePA as well. Thank you guys so much for watching. You know, come back and check me out next week or tomorrow because I have a ton of videos. So you can check all those videos out as well. And I will talk to you guys next time. Bye.