 You want to do your intro real quick? Uh, sure. Alright, let's try that one more time. Okay. Get your intro. Okay. Sure. Hold on a second. Um, so my name's Anne, Canadian PA, Orthopedic Surgery, this is my true life. This is my true life. And this is- There's a swag on that too. This is my true life. This is it. This is it. This is it. Hey guys, I'm Anne. I'm a Canadian physician assistant practicing an orthopedic surgery. This is my true life. Guys, this is Adana. Welcome back to my channel. We are doing another true life series. For those of you who don't know about my series, I do true lives about different PAs or pre-PAs in the profession. And, um, you can look at all of those videos on my channel. I just type in true life series and you can see some of the ones that I've already done. But today we're going to be doing a true life. I'm a Canadian PA with Anne right here. I'm really excited about this. Um, you know, I've been wondering a lot you guys. What is it like to be a PA in Canada and just a PA, an international PA in general? Um, we're here at APA guys. Oh my god. You're great about yourself. So I actually, um, I'm really into a lot of different passions. So first and foremost, it's always been graphic and web design as well as social media marketing. That's been something that I've been to when I was very, very young. Okay. So I was always an early adopter of Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest. Something new came out. I would love to experiment with it in 2013. I acquired my first SLR. It's a, it's the smallest, um, handheld Canon that you can use. And I only used a kit lens. So I started experimenting with food photography because I'm also into baking as well. Kind of embarrassing. I haven't actually shared this with anybody publicly before. I'm the first. And now you guys get it. Oh my goodness. Okay. I do a lot of buttercream cakes, cupcakes, drip cakes. I haven't gotten into fondant because it's super technical. But what I'll do is I'll browse through Pinterest or if I see something really inspiring, I'll just kind of want to try it out. And then I'll, I'll go ahead and photograph it. Oh, that is so cool. Yeah. I like cooking. I'm not really that great of a baker per se. That's not like my thing. So that's really cool. And just started a brand new YouTube channel about being a P in Canada. So if you're interested about that, go ahead right now and head on over to my channel and subscribe. The link will be in the description box below, but and just tell us a little bit about what your channel is going to be about. So it's essentially about being a PA in Canada. It is literally requirements to get into PA school, what it's like to practice as a PA. I mean, there's so much content that out there about American PAs, which is excellent because we borrow a lot from what you guys do in the States, but I was finding a lot of my audience was asking for YouTube content. It's a brand new medium that we're trying and it's been very, very fruitful so far. But you guys will get to know more of Ann in this series that is that we're about to do the true life. I'm a Canadian PA cannot wait for you guys to get all of the information about being a PA in Canada. But we're going to do that in just a few seconds. So I was doing my undergraduate degree in the Bachelor of Health Sciences program at McMaster University. At the time I was working towards becoming pre-med and I knew that I wanted to pursue medicine, but I wasn't sure if the medical school traditional route was the right one for me. I was gearing up to prepare to write the MCAT and I almost signed up for the preparatory course. But I had a change of heart. I spoke to my guidance counselor and she had mentioned that McMaster was actually starting the very first PA program in Ontario and that they were going to be taking their first class in. I was in my third year at the time and I decided after going to the information session that I was going to wait a year so they could figure out the kinks and then I would go ahead and join the class. I ended up speaking with a second year, or sorry, a first year PA student and she told me about the philosophy of the program, the education, as well as how PA's practice. And I just fell in love with the philosophy of it and I decided to apply. Luckily I got in and that's how I found out about the PA program. So right now PA's only practice in four provinces in Canada. It's Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, New Brunswick. The Canadian Association of Physician Assistance is working on adding more provinces and territories to introduce PAs. And for the most part, a lot of healthcare providers have heard of PA and the potential of PA but aren't quite sure about the potential for the PA to make a difference in their practice. So often more than not what ends up happening is that physicians will take on a PA grad or a PA student and that student actually has to educate the physician a little bit about what PAs do. And we find that patients aren't too sure what PAs are. So a helpful similarity that I like to use is that we're very close to nurse practitioners in terms of how we see and assess patients and how you might be treated in a primary care setting. In other settings we're somewhat similar to a junior or senior resident depending on the number of years of experience. And then beyond that PAs are a lot like a second version of the physician being able to see and assess patients being so familiar with the practice that they know all the treatment protocols are able to perform procedures and are quite autonomous and very skilled as time goes on and they're able to build that knowledge and competency. So in Canada we have three schools in total that are in the civilian setting and in the military setting there's just the one school. So there's two schools in Ontario which include the PA Consortium which is actually a collaboration between three schools, University of Toronto, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine as well as the Missioner Institute. That's based in Toronto, Ontario but part of that is distance education. The other program is McMaster University and the third is University of Manitoba. So Manitoba is a master's program and the Ontario schools, the PA Consortium as well as McMaster are actually bachelors. So the requirements tend to vary a little bit between the three schools. First and foremost across all schools you have to be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of Canada. Now I don't set the admission requirements for the programs at all and I can only speculate as to why that is a requirement but right now Canadian PAs can only practice in Canada. So in my personal opinion I think it would only be fair to admit Canadian students since the degree that you end up with will only allow you to practice within Canada. We cannot go and practice into the United States or in other countries right now because we can't challenge the pants because the PA schools are currently not arc-PA approved. So that's one. Being a Canadian citizen, PR resident, if English is a second language then you need to provide proof of your proficiency and that varies between the different schools too. So you can go to their websites to find out what specific requirements you need whether that's a certain TOEFL score. And then if you are an international student whether you're an international medical graduate or you did your degree in a foreign university and this includes if you are American but are a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of Canada then you need to have your grades accredited because they need to ensure the GPA translates into sort of Canadian terms. The other part is a little bit of a differentiating factor between American PA schools and Canadian PA schools. So right now you do not need a GRE or MCAT in order to apply to the schools. Only one school requires healthcare experience hours and at the time of recording it is 910 healthcare experience hours for the PA consortium program slash U of T. The healthcare experience hours have evolved over time so always be sure to check out the website to find out what the requirements are before they required paid direct healthcare experience. Now it can be paid or voluntary and as long as patient care is involved then you can apply. McMaster and University of Manitoba does not require healthcare experience hours in order to apply. However that's not to say that isn't an asset to have when you speak to it on your supplementary application or letter of intent to the university. The second part is GPA so in Ontario the GPA is based on the AMSA scale which is used to calculate GPA for medical schools in Ontario and we do it out in Ontario it's out of a 4.0 scale. At University of Toronto right now the minimum GPA requirement is 2.7. In McMaster it's a minimum of 3.0. At University of Manitoba I believe it's a 3.5 out of 4.5. Their GPA scale is a little bit different in terms of how they calculate it so you can go to their website to find out the scale conversion for GPA. With that being said the reality is even though the minimum cutoff is at a certain amount the average of students that get intense to be a little bit higher and that's not to say that there are other aspects like leadership, communication skills, your written and verbal are important attributes as well and how well you can speak to your experiences and relate to the PA profession is important to. McMaster University does not require any courses, prerequisite courses and University of Toronto doesn't state that they have required courses but there are courses that are recommended which I believe is an anatomy and physiology as well as chemistry. University of Manitoba has requirements for anatomy and physiology as well as biochemistry and that's a requirement that you have to have and there's a certain number of course hours that you need for that. So I believe you just have to ensure that all your paperwork is submitted on time before you get into it. So Canadians write their own version of the PA certification examination. It's overseen by the Physician Assistant Certification Council of Canada aka PAC with three C's. What it is is it's written in October around the time of the Canadian PA conference and you have to be a member of CAPPA, the Canadian Association in order to write that exam. It's got a very similar blueprint to the PAN's exam with the exception of the fact that it's based on Cannes meds PA which is our version of our national competency profile as well as scope of practice. So they cover the different topics that are involved in that. So in terms of scope of practice I'm going to start with how PAs are actually educated in Canada so it's a 24 to 26 month program very similar to American PAs except a little bit different philosophy depending on the school that you're looking at. So usually first year the first 12 months includes didactic learning where you're in the classroom. All schools use a combination of traditional didactic with problem based learning. They're learning clinical skills in the classroom and completing placements, usually half day observerships in the community with practicing physician assistants, physicians as well as allied healthcare professionals. So when I was in my first year I had the opportunity to practice a paramedic. At the time I didn't know of any civilian PAs practicing in Ontario because we hadn't gotten that far with introducing them yet so I did shadow a few physicians in that regard. Really got me some exposure to how medicine is practiced in different settings and your second year is your clinical clerkship so in that year you spend 12 to 14 months completing core and elective rotations so core rotations tend to typically be family medicine, emerge OBGYN, pediatrics internal medicine as well as surgery and then we have the option to do elective rotations as well. So I did mine orthopedic surgery. What else did I do in urology and dermatology? There are a few different requirements depending on the school you go to so for PA consortium for instance 50% of your rotations are done in northern or rural Ontario and that gives you exposure to different kind of learning settings in different patient populations which I think is very unique. So we are trained as generalists I know in the United States you guys do have residencies for PA's where you can get additional training but that doesn't exist in Canada right now. So if you are interested in a particular specialty what ends up happening is you will choose that specialty for your elective so you can build up your references and your skill set or possibly convince a preceptor to hire you once you're done your rotation. After that you go straight into practice and it's a lot of job learning so but it's with the intention of keeping you for the long term. So you start working for a practice and our scope of practice is very broad but it's also dependent on the supervising physician or collaborating physician that we are working with. So for instance if you're trained as an Emerge PA and you were performing lumbar punctures and you switch specialties and go into a family medicine practice. If that family med doc doesn't typically do lumbar punctures in that office then even though you have that skill set you really shouldn't be doing that because within the practice agreement that you have at that site with that supervising physician they don't typically do it in that setting. There is lateral mobility so we are able to switch specialties. There isn't a specialty that we can't work in we generally work in anywhere that a collaborating physician would like to work with the PA. So I know that in the United States PA's are working in very very subspecialized areas so pediatric ICU, pediatric oncology, interventional radiology. I don't know if we're quite there yet in Canada but we are seeing PA's go into different specialties and working. A big challenge for us I guess what I'll talk about is the experience that I had speaking to two new PA grads at the conference. We were sort of comparing our American and Canadian experiences and one girl that I had met had recently been hired by a neurology team and they had already known how to work with PA's. It was very well established the employer knew what they were looking for and they knew how to utilize her to the top of their scope of practice. There was a PA from here in Louisiana that had mentioned that PA's aren't as well integrated in this state so there was a lot of education to health care providers as well as patients as to what a PA is, what they do and how they could oversee their treatment. I feel like we're a little bit closer to the situation in Louisiana where the public and health care providers aren't as familiar with PA's they may have heard of them so what's a little bit challenging is when you're working with employers you may be the first PA in that hospital and that is not uncommon so for instance at the community hospital that I work at PA's were recently introduced earlier this year so just in January they had their very very first two PA's and that was in the ortho service so there was a lot of work around educating all the professionals about how nursing staff would interact with PA's consulting physicians on different services how am I communicating with you what's your knowledge base what do you expect so it involved a lot of education professionally and ensuring that everyone was on the same page when it came to working with the PA and then from a patient perspective ensuring that the patients understood the care that they were receiving and what our role was in that team based care yes so PA's are completely accepted in Canada some employers prefer you to have the Canadian certified physician assistant designation the CCPA so you would need to be a member of Kappa in order to practice there in addition in order to get the PA liability insurance that's only offered through the Canadian Association through membership and access to the internal job board listings and the network and community of PA's that are Canadian would also require membership to the Canadian Association so if you do join you can technically practice with your PAC at least at this time being in Ontario in Etobal, Alberta, New Brunswick but it is valuable to be able to join the Canadian Association of Physician Assistance I do see a greater need for PA's in Canada right now we do have a philosophy from the Canada Health Act of universality access to health care portability justice so those are the principles of the Canada Health Care Act I feel like PA's help fulfill all of those different circumstances health care spending is a lot and there's obviously not enough to go around PA's are a cost efficient way to help address some of the health care discrepancies that are that some Canadians are going through so being able to access a health care provider in a timely manner being able to reduce wait times and reduce physician burnout it's a huge issue in Canada as well as I understand in the United States we're also involved in resident education and learning and from the feedback that I've spoken to with surgery residents in Toronto whenever they've had a PA on the surgery team the PA actually takes care of inpatient and word management while the residents focus on the OR so they're able to take care of the call in that regard and they have said you know the PA team should have a PA it's just better for resident quality of life and resident education patients enjoy working with us we're able to decrease wait times in order to see a provider so for instance instead of waiting 3-4 weeks to see your family doc the PA might have an availability so you can see them whether the next day or within the same week we love taking time to see our patients spend time in patient education we love building rapport with patients and staff so I do see that there is a need we're a cost efficient way to provide quality care within the healthcare system and yeah so if you're interested in becoming a physician assistant in Canada the first thing that I would recommend is that you do as much research as you can about what PA's do their scope of practice challenges to practice and why they why PA's enjoy working within healthcare just like any healthcare profession that you're considering it's important to be reflective of what your values are what's important to you and what your long-term goals are like any other healthcare profession PA school is competitive so you want to ensure that you're at least at par with other average candidates that are applying and you know work on your communication skills see if you can speak to or shadow a PA to learn more about their reasons for going into the profession there are currently 700 PA's in Canada and we are growing but there's certainly a need for more so I'd definitely encourage you to apply look into what your requirements are and do your best in admissions alright you guys that was amazing I got so much really good information and really what I came away with was that we're not that different honestly you know there are slight little things here and there but for the most part everything is pretty much the same even like our scope of practice so that was really cool to know and also I can go to Canada and work you know in a couple of years if I want to so that's really exciting so anyways if you guys have not already done so please go on and head on over to Ann's YouTube channel and subscribe right now like I said the link will be in the description box below and you can also follow her on Instagram what's your Instagram handle so it's at Canadian PA blog I'm also on Twitter at Canadian PA and I'm also on Pinterest at Canadian PA and you can also find me on Facebook the Canadian PA blog it's pretty straight forward so go on and head on over to all of those different social media handles that she just named and follow her there as well because she's doing some really great stuff for Canadian PAs and just PAs in general thank you so much for that thank you guys so much for watching this True Life series I hope you guys got some valuable information I really really appreciate you taking the time out to talk to me about this Ann and to just inform people on what it is like to be a PA in Canada if you guys haven't already done so go on and head down way up over I think it's over here subscribe to my channel if you haven't already this way yes subscribe to my channel if you haven't already done so follow me on Instagram at adana the PA and you can also just send me emails at adanathepngmail.com as well if you have any further questions and leave your comments in the comment section below thank you guys so much for watching and I will talk to you guys next time bye I think it's really amazing what you're doing I think that there's a huge need for PAs and the demand is certainly there has all the programs and all the people looking into it but that group of pre-PAs they need encouragement and they need guidance and if they're motivated and willing you're just the perfect passionate person to go to for encouragement and guidance and sort of mentorship and I think like you just hit the nail on the head with the different topics that you do for your YouTube so like GRE vs MCAT and I think you do want an MD vs PA as well and the different topics yeah it's certainly answering a lot of questions and I know Canadian viewers have been watching you as well so it makes a huge difference and hopefully you're inspiring the future generation of PAs and clearly meeting all of them so it's been phenomenal and it's such a privilege to finally meet you I've been talking to my husband like oh my gosh I cannot wait to talk to her because I really want to know what it's like PA in Canada that's so interesting to me just PAs in international PAs in general I'm really excited to meet you I was super excited it's been very surreal I came across your channel and I love your brand and I love your energy like for me I'm very introverted so it takes like a little bit of energy to like bring it up like I have some friends that are YouTubers so they're like yeah you should stand and puff your chest up and it just seems very natural for you that's like your authentic personality