Rotation # 1 : Urgent Care
Here are the details~
Specialty: Urgent Care / Worker’s Compensation
Schedule: Monday - Friday 8am - 5pm
How it went down~
Here we go! First rotation had me so nervous but excited at the same time. This was the beginning of our second year- where we get to practice and put to use all our knowledge from first year!
Thoughts going through my mind the night before:
Will I be competent? Am I even ready? I’m such an imposter.. Wait, no. You’re fine. Just go for it. You’re half way to becoming a real PA. Be confident and open minded. This is exciting!
I got around 6 hours of sleep and got ready for my first day. Let’s go through the checklist:
White coat
Stethoscope
Name badge
Lunch
Water bottle
Check, check, check! Now let’s see what traffic is like. ONE HOUR & FIFTEEN Minutes. Oh crap ~ I BARELY made it on time. I ended up at the wrong building across the street and made it into the correct clinic at 8:03am. My tip to you: plan to leave even earlier on your first day!
At this clinic, majority of the cases were worker’s compensation with a sprinkle of urgent care (cough, colds, UTIs). Would you believe me if I told you that there was only ONE provider here? Dr. Tran is a superwoman. As I got use to the EMR system and the patient load day after day, I was amazed at how she did all this by herself. Granted, there are 6-7 amazing medical assistants working - but heck- this was a lot.
PROS
I practiced so much of my medical Spanish! I would say 90% of our patients were Spanish speakers! What’s more- Dr. Tran is fluent in Spanish, Vietnamese and English! I was definitely inspired by her. I did a ton of employment physicals, read X-ray films, dealt with a lot of low back strains, sutured a whole lot of fingers and did an incision and drainage of an abscess!
CONS
The distance honestly. It was 30 miles each way and an hour and a half with traffic to and from. The traffic drained me :( Other than that though- this was a great first rotation!
Senior Seminar Exam
Each month we have two exams where we have to be on campus on a Friday and Monday. For this month’s SS exam, we were tested on Dermatology and HEENT. I used quizlets and re-listened to the lecture to study for this.
End of Rotation Exam
To be quite honest, I didn’t really study all that much for this first exam. I went through the Urgent Care blueprint that our program provided us explaining the topics covered for this exam. I looked up some things in my notes from last year and that was all. What’s also helpful is the blueprint on PAEA. Happy to say, I passed!
September Meet-Up in Santa Ana!
My first ever meet-up was a success! Thank you all for coming out and for spreading the positivity! I had two classmates, Anh and Tommy come by as well as 3 PA-Cs! Thank you to Dan, Steven and Katie for joining us and for sharing your wisdom! I hope you guys enjoyed our get-together and met new friends. I can’t wait to meet more of you in person next month in Pomona! To find more info about the next meet-up, go to events!
