Thank you for taking the time to review my personal statement on why I have chosen to embark on the journey to become a Physician Assistant. My story started several years ago, more than I care to count, when I stumbled into the health care world as a paramedic in rural Pennsylvanian. While in high school, I became friends with several other students who were actively volunteering with a local fire department. After hearing their stories about the things they were learning and doing I also joined a volunteer fire department, mostly out of curiosity. Over the course of a couple of years I discovered that the challenges that I encountered during training and responding to emergencies had unlocked some unrealized, more like unknown, drive inside …show more content…
I have seen the best and of course the not so stellar examples of how to do things. All of these experiences have impacted me and my abilities. I recall shortly after starting my first job as a paramedic asking a physician at the local emergency room about a medical condition that one of my patients had and that I was not familiar with. He politely smiled, said follow me, and walked over to the physician charting area. He reached up to a shelf of books that was above the desk and pulled down this large, intimidating book with a red and white cover, Tintinalli’s Emergency Medicine. He quickly flipped through a couple of hundred pages and pointed to a section. He said, read this first and then we will talk about it. This was the start, while I didn’t identify it at the time, of a constant back and forth between me and a couple of emergency medicine physicians who just happened to work in my local small town emergency room. They would not just answer my questions, or just tell me to do this or that, but that they would point me in the right direction to learn on my own and then be there to support me and to answer my questions. It is a practice that I have continued my entire career. Looking, learning, striving to know more, and then seeking out