No PA Experience = GETTING my FIRST job??!! // PA Startup 

Thank you! Glad you’re enjoying the channel! Good questions: 1) anatomy depends on school, but I’ve found they’re usually very close to med school classes. Often times the anatomy classes at teaching institutions mix med students, PA students, physical therapy students, etc. Smaller schools not affiliated with a med school might not have the same resources: cadavers, dissection labs, etc. 2) Because PA school is family practice oriented we’re not surgeons and can’t perform our own surgery, but instead learn on the job. Some state laws for PAs State that once you have two or more years of experience in a specialty field, you can carry out anything delegated to you by the surgeon. I will never be listed as the primary surgeon, but there are situations where we as PAs perform major parts of a case. It’s very much dependent on your supervising surgeon and the state laws where you are practicing. 3) similar to above, it depends on your experience, technical abilities, and relationship with the surgeon. In school you will be treated similar to a med student in the OR, working on suturing skills, attracting, and learning about the overall procedure. In practice, and you act as a first assistant which varies depending on your specialty area. In general surgery I held the camera for laparoscopic procedures and closed only skin. In Cardiothoracic Surgery we have significantly more surgical responsibilities and autonomy. (Granted I was only in general surgery for a year and a half, I have been in Cardiothoracic Surgery for 13 years) Hope this helps, thanks so much for your comment & watching our channel!

@@PAStartup yes. We trained right with med school student

Glad it was helpful - hopefully since it took me 3 months to respond, it's still being helpful! 😂

Thank you! We appreciate it, thank you for watching👍👍🙌🏼

Hey!! Yes, we’re great…thanks for checking!! Took a break to work on a CME program (details coming soon!) and real job has been busy! We’re almost done with the CME courses, then back to RU-vid!🙌🏼

Thanks for watching our videos and congrats on starting rotations….way more fun than the didactic portion of school! I can give you some insight since I’ve been on both ends (applying for CTS jobs while in school and hiring new grads for CTS). Understandably the process is going to be different for everyone but I think applying for jobs in school is a great idea. When we hire new PAs we are looking for someone that can start sooner than later. Not to say a hospital won’t wait for you but you are more likely to get a job as a new grad if you can start in the next 90 days or so. So 1-3 months out is a good target. That’s when I applied. I had a couple job offers while in my last month of school. You’re going to run into the fact that most CTS programs are looking for experience in EVH. We actually made a course to help with this. It will give you a better shot compared to other new grads with no experience. Check out vesselharvest.com to find out more. Feel free to shoot us an email too (on the website) for more info. Thanks again for checking out our content!!

@@PAStartup Thank you for this information!!

@@PAStartup Hello once more! Sorry to keep pestering you with CTS questions lol But I am currently on my CTS rotation as a PA-S and this experience so far really solidifies that this is precisely what I want to do upon graduation. However, my question for y'all is this: do you believe CTS is a 'dying breed'? One of the perfusionists at the hospital I am at currently was talking about how each year since around 2000 they have been having less and less cases for CTS at their hospital and he is always worried about losing his job and that the demand for CTS is not that high/is decreasing etc etc. Do you believe that to be true from a CTS PA perspective? It might be a unique case, but the hospital I am currently at for my CTS rotation they only do 1 to maybe 2 cases per day starting around 7am and then all the PAs leave before 1pm when all the cases are done. March may just be a slow month for them or they may still be suffering from the elective cancellations because of COVID or perhaps there are variables that I am not aware of that is causing this light patient load per day, but I am just worried that as a new grad who wants to go into CTS its going to be hard to either find a job or to stay in the field of CTS simply because the surgeries are being performed less because of non-invasive procedures or other variables... Do you have any thoughts on this or do you think my experience with this is simply a geographic thing causing the low patient load etc. or is it indeed a true perception that CTS as a whole is simply not thriving because of not a lot of demand for open heart surgeries etc.? Thank you!

Thank you! One of our original podcasts was with our PA student at the time who was an international student…let me find it and I’ll send you the link!

@@PAStartup Thanks lots!!!!!

Found it! It’s from the pre-RU-vid days, so it’s audio only…ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lbw62hdaqt0.html Hope this helps-if you need more info head to our website contact form so I can get your email and I can put you in touch with the guy on the podcast! (Well, the other guy - not me obviously 😉)

@@PAStartup omggggggg thanks so much for your help. Appreciate!☺