Physician Assistant
Day in the Life
Hi Salus! My name is Emily and I am a second-year Physician Assistant (PA) Studies student. I am currently on my second clinical rotation: internal medicine at Inspira Medical Center Vineland in New Jersey.
Here is what a day in my life looks like:
Typically, my day starts around 5 a.m. I begin the day by getting ready for work, packing my lunch, making a quick breakfast, and making coffee. My commute to Vineland, New Jersey, takes about an hour in the morning. I arrive at work around 6:50 a.m. and head into the hospital for my 7 a.m. start time.
On Wednesday mornings we have lectures for everyone on the internal medicine service including residents and students. One recent lecture was an intern case report on a patient that had metastatic lung disease that had spread to their pituitary causing central diabetes insipidus. After the lecture, I headed to the second floor and began by getting a report from the senior resident regarding which patients I will be following for the day.
On this day, I was following one patient that I had been seeing since the beginning of the week and one new patient. One patient was an older gentleman that had a COPD exacerbation and was awaiting a thoracentesis for bilateral pleural effusions. The second patient experienced a syncopal episode and was getting a full cardiac workup done.
For the patient that I had been following all week, I checked to see if they had any events overnight, reviewed labs, imaging, and any updates from consulting services. For the new patient, I took a more detailed look at the emergency room admission, past medical history, current medications, home medications, and the history and physical. Reviewing charts takes about an hour. After I finished, I headed to the patient’s rooms to perform a physical exam. Also that day, my team was on call for any rapid responses that occurred in the hospital; before rounds, a rapid response was called for new-onset stroke symptoms. We headed to the patient's room, did a physical exam and it was decided that the patient should have a CT scan done.
Bedside rounds with the entire team start at 10:30 a.m. We go from room to room and present each patient to the attending physician and come up with a plan. I am responsible for presenting my patients that I was following to the attending physician. After rounds lunch is at 12:15 p.m. Each day during lunch we have a lecture for the internal medicine team that is given by a resident or attending physician. This day’s lecture was given by a GI physician on hepatobiliary disease. We discussed various conditions and answered a few scenario-based questions as a group.
Wednesdays are a very busy day for students. After the lecture and lunch, we have a SIM lab. During the SIM lab we work with the residents who were in the outpatient clinic that week to work through a simulated case on a manikin. The manikin can be programmed to have heart sounds, lung sounds, pulses, make noises, blink, receive CPR and have line access performed on it. This day’s scenario was about an older woman who presented with failure to thrive and ended up falling to the ground in the hospital and obtained a basilar skull fracture. We worked through the case, what the patient’s emergent needs were, administered medications, and came to a final diagnosis. After the case was finished we debriefed on what went well and what we can improve on. I left the hospital at around 4:30 p.m.
My drive back from the hospital takes about an hour and half because of traffic. During my commute I put on a “Cram The Pance” podcast, today I listened to a podcast on AV blocks. Once I got home, I made a quick dinner and began to study for the night. My goal was to complete 40 Rosh Review/Blueprint questions for the night. After I finished the questions, I relaxed for a little and headed to bed ready to start the next day!
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