 Welcome back to my channel. Another installment of the True Life series. And if you haven't seen any of my other True Life series, please go ahead and hit up my channel right now. Go to the search bar and type in True Life and all those will come up. But this particular installment is True Life. I am an urgent care PA, which is pretty interesting to me because I used to work at an urgent care before PA school. And I used to see all the PA's kind of doing their thing, you know, just kind of saving lives. Saving lives and just taking care of patients. So it's cool to actually be able to now talk to one and get you all this information on what it's like to be an urgent care PA. So you are going to be introduced to Mary. She's the urgent care PA that is going to be talking about her experience in this particular True Life series. So without further ado, I give you Mary. Hi everyone, my name is Mary. I am an urgent care PA and this is my True Life. My name is Mary. Sometimes I tell people, Mary, like, Mary Christmas so you'll never forget my name. I am a PA originally from PA, Pennsylvania, which is kind of ironic and funny. Moved to Denver last year and I am loving it. I love being a PA and in my spare time, I like to figure skate, hike, climb, enjoy the outdoors and travel in my spare time. I always knew I wanted to be in the medical field. Didn't know exactly what. When I was around six to seven years old, my dad had an MRI and he was in this big round tube. I was really young, didn't know what was going on and all I remember was the MRI tech being super cool, calming me down, telling me about the procedure, showing me all the new images and since then I was hooked. I love the science behind it all. So in high school, I got most of my hours. I wanted to live by my decision. I volunteered in the hospital, did a lot of shadowing of PAs and other medical professionals. I knew PA was the right step for me. At the same time in college, I was getting my pre-regs, suffering through anatomy and biology and all those courses. I was also professionally figure skating during my summers off. Skating is my passion and dream. I spent my last three summers skating from Woodstock Ice Productions and now I wanna skate for you. Enjoy my team. From college to save up for school. Now it was one of the toughest decisions I ever had to make. Part of me wanted to be a PA and pursue my medical field dream. The other part of me wanted to continue figure skating professionally, coaching, choreographing and going along that route. In the end, I decided to go into PA school. I got accepted, really thought about it, decided to pursue that dream and I'm super happy with my decision because currently I get to be a PA but also on the side still figure skate and teach and be involved in that, which is really neat. I have been an urgent care PA for three years so time definitely flies by when you graduate from school. They always say the first few years are the hardest. You learn so much for sure. My first day on the job was pretty scary. Urgent care, you see a little bit of everything. You don't know what to expect. My first job out of school previously was an inpatient surgery. It was definitely a big switch for me but I'm a big believer in doing things that scare you, makes you grow and be a better person overall. School for practice is pretty neat and unpredictable. Again, you see whatever comes in through the door and you try your best to treat it. We have an interesting setup. My urgent care is in the same building as a lot of specialists and primary care. So I do see a lot of primary care stuff. I see a lot of more acute urgent things like cough, colds, fall, sprains, lacerations and we do see a fair share of emergent situations, chest pain, strokes, abdominal traumas, falling off bikes, head injuries. So definitely a huge scope. Definitely in any field as a PA we are working under a physician supervisor. So do of course what you're comfortable with but the nice thing about being a PA is that you do have a supervisor, you do have a mentor, you can call at any time and colleagues that can reach out to at any time to ask for definite opinions and for further advice and such. Great question. So after I clock in, I log into my computer, I go through my in-basket at first which consists of labs and results that came back and missed phone calls from patients. So I try to attack those, my MA and I, we like to do that. Of course you never know with urgent care sometimes I walk in and there's already five people waiting, sometimes we don't have anyone for a few minutes. So I try to do that in between seeing patients. We see patients of all ages from zero down to the elderly. So huge range, really fun and keeps you guessing. Also in between patients, I try to call back anyone emergent. I sent to the ER recently or anything when I'm worried about, just wanna follow up on them. I think it's really nice even though we're urgent care to have a relationship with your patients, see how they're feeling. It really shows them your care and also I really think of treating my patients as family members even though I may see them once but to be honest I almost always see my patients back whether they come back for another visit, they come back with their friend or a family member. You usually do develop a relationship with these patients which is pretty neat. I am so, so thankful to never be on call. That's one awesome thing about being PA is you can choose what specialty you wanna work in and one major thing for me is that I don't ever wanna be on call. So it's definitely a huge perk. I generally work 36 hours a week. My shifts range from eight to 12 hour shifts and I do have the flexibility of picking up extra shifts if I want some extra. Voila. This is a funny story. One of my most embarrassing situations in my PA career was actually when I was a student. I was working in surgery. We were doing some kind of laparoscopic surgery and I saw this big moving thing that kept beating. So I asked my surgeon, hey, what is this? And the whole room started laughing. It was so mortifying because she goes, Mary, that's not hard. So I don't know, surgery rotation was rough. All those long hours, I think I just wasn't thinking, but oh my gosh, that's my most embarrassing story. It is so rewarding to do what you love every day and it's so rewarding to know that you're making a difference in people's lives. I love hearing back from my patients and knowing that I was able to help them and make a difference. It's also a job that keeps you humble and on your toes. Some days you're gonna feel like you're on top of the world and that you did something super amazing and other days you're gonna be like, oh gosh, I have so much to learn. This is like too much for me. Medicine is always changing. It always keeps you on your toes. So I'm very grateful to have a job where I can keep improving and also be humble. So to be honest, my patients truly inspire me a lot. It's crazy to see some of my patients they have cancer, they lost a loved one, they're homeless, they just have so much going on but yet they have this biggest smile on their face. It's just so inspiration to know that if they can do it then anyone else can do it too. So my message to you all, whether you are a PA hopeful, a PA student or practicing PA, this is an awesome job and such a rewarding career. To the PA hopefuls, keep applying, keep following your dreams. If you get rejected, don't give up, just keep doing it. You will get in, you're smart enough and you're capable. For the PA students, man, school is rough. It will get better once you start working. The first few years are rough but it will be much better. They chose you for a reason, getting into school. For, in my opinion, was the hardest part. You were selected out of thousands of people. Just hang in there, you got this. And for practicing PA's, remember what you're doing and that you're so lucky to do it. I think I see people so many times that are really jaded and just going through the motions but just take a step back and remember why you started. Remember the path you went to to do this and remember that patients are relying on you and that you do truly make a difference whether you realize it or not. Thank you so much, Mary. I really wanna thank you so much for taking the time out to talk about your experience of being an Urgent Care PA. Like, I'm really excited about the fact that you were talking about Urgent Care PA but I'm so much more interested in the fact that you were a professional skater. Like, figure skater, that's so cool. I remember my friend when like, this is like a side note story, you guys. When we were in eighth grade, she wanted to be a figure skater so bad that she would like do jumps on her roller blades. So this is really interesting and it's really cool how you're still able to feed that aspect of your life, that creative, you know, sporty aspect in being a figure skater and a coach and also being a PA. And that is the beauty of this profession, you guys. You can do both. You can have it all, I guess you could say. You can have the home life. You can have the life that you may have wanted before and you can also be in medicine and still taking care of patients and managing their different disease courses. So if you haven't already done so, go ahead right now, you guys, do your research. Definitely look at the different specialties that PAs can work in because it's important for you to know exactly all of the different areas so that you can make the best and most important decision for your life. I will definitely just keep keeping you guys posted on exactly what I choose or, you know, where I'm kind of narrowing myself down in the terms of what kind of PA I wanna be. Thank you guys so much for watching and supporting me on this journey through PA school. Please, guys, go ahead and support Mary on her channel as well and just show her some love and if you haven't already done so, just do this one thing for me, you guys. Go ahead and subscribe. Join the family and follow me on Instagram at AdanaThePA. Thank you guys so much for watching. Please leave your comments and your questions in the comment section below. I'll be sure to get back to them. Bye. Thanks so much, Adana, for having me. She is awesome. Really watch her channel. 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