How NOT to be a PA Sellout The Physician Assistant Vocation

So many PAs I meet are unsatisfied with their careers. I have met many amid-levelpractitioner who has become entangled in a web of profit driven,incentivizedby the numbers healthcare. They have forgotten why they became a PA, to begin with. We all become PAs with a great desire to help people, but it often doesn't end that way. PA Jekyll and Mr. Hide The transformation happens sometime around graduation... Once thesalaryfigures start being tossed around. People change in ways I cannot even describe. It's all about competition, numbers, salaries and benefits. It is all about me and less about what all yourwonderfulskills can do to help your patients. This is why you went into medicine. I challenge you never to forget this. We can all succumb to social pressures, and after a while when money and profit run dry we are leftunsatisfied. This level of dissatisfaction is measured by the degree to which you havesuccumbedto another pressure in life: Social Pressures to Conform Thiscounterforcecan be very powerful, you want to fit into a group. Unconsciously you feel that what makes you different isembarrassingor painful. Your parents often act as acounterforceas well. They may seek to direct you to a career path that is lucrative and comfortable. If these counterforces become strong enough you can lose complete contact with youruniqueness, the reason you went into medicine, whoyou really are. Your inclinations and desires become modeled on those of others. This can set you off on a very dangerous path, you end upchoosinga career path that does not really suit you, your desire and interest slowly wane and your work suffers for it. You come to see pleasure andfulfillmentas something that comes from outside of work. Because you are increasingly less engaged in your career you fail to payattentionto changes going on in the field, you fall behind the times and pay a price for this. At moments when you must make important decisions you flounder or follow what others are doing because you have no sense of your inner radar or direction to guide you. You have broken contact with your destiny, the one you aspired to when you started PA school. At all cost, you must avoid such a fate! The process of following your life task all the way to mastery can begin at any point in life. The hidden force that drove you into a career in medicine, into this career as a physician assistant is always in you and ready to be engaged. Three Steps to Realign With Your Goals as a Physician Assistant First:Connect or reconnect with your inclinations. The first step is inward, search the past for your inner voice, clear away the voices that confuse you such as parents or peers, look for an underlying pattern, a chord to your character that you must understand as deeply as possible. Second:With thisconnectionestablished you must look at the career path you are already on or about to begin. The choice of this path or redirection of it is critical. To help in this stage you will need to enlarge your concept of work itself. Too often we make a separation of this in our lives. There is work and then there is life outside of work where we find real pleasure and fulfillment. Work is often seen as a means for making money so that we can enjoy that second life that we lead. Even if we derive some satisfaction from our careers we still tend tocompartmentalizeour lives in this way. This is a depressingattitudebecause intheend, we spend a substantial part of our waking life at work. If we experience this time as something to get throughon the way to "real pleasure" than our hours at work represent a tragic waste of the short time we have to live. Instead, aim to see your work as part of something more inspiring as part of your "vocation." Your work is connected deeply to who you are, not aseparatecompartment in your life. If you do this you will develop a true sense of vocation! Third:You must see your career or vocational path more as a journey with twists and turns rather than a straight line. Choose a position that corresponds to your inclinations. Make a living and establish some confidence. Once on this path, you will discover other side paths that. Eventually, you will hit upon a field that suits you perfectly. You will recognize it when you find it because it will spark thatchildlikesense of wonder and excitement, it will feel right. Once found everything will fall into place, you will learn more quickly and deeply, your skill level will reach a point where you will be able to declare your independence from within the group you work for and move out on your own. In a world in which there is so much, we cannot control this will bring you the ultimate form of power. You will determine your circumstances, you will be the PA you wanted to be when you first visualized thestethoscope hangingaround your neck. Whatever you do, don't be a PA sellout. Be who you know you are called to be deep inside. If we do this we can transform the PA profession from just a career to the one place inmedicinewhere patients, not profits, come first. We transform our profession into a vocation, the way it should be! document.createElement('audio'); http://traffic.libsyn.com/pasquini/How_Not_to_Be_a_PA_Sellout.mp3Podcast (thepalife): Download (5.1MB) | EmbedSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Podcasts | RSS You may also like -The #1 Trait that Determines Long Term Success as a Physician Assistant "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Sir Winston Churchill I've come to realize that its not the best genetics, the highest GPA, or the most pertinent healthcare experience that []Make a Difference Train the Next Generation of PAs in Sub-Saharan Africa as a Clinical Associates MentorNote:The Clinical Associates twinning partnerships in South Africa are made possible through the support of the US Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in South []Your Main Goal on Your Path to PA Shouldnt be Immediate Success or Money, But to Learn as Much as PossibleYour primary goal as a new physician assistant or as someone hoping to become one should not be immediate success or money, but to learn as much as possible. 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