Tuesday, February 21, 2012

RRT to PA

Hi all. After spending an inordinate amount of time researching some stuff, and stumbling onto some good PA student blogs, I realized how utterly neglected this one is. I know I did say I'd update from time to time, so here goes.

It's been...almost 5 months since I've last posted, and things around the hospital are... busy. I can't quite convey just how much is expected of us sometimes. Some nights when I get home I can't help but fling myself into bed and not move a muscle until the next morning. Anywho. No one said working in a hospital is a breeze.

The rapport with the fellow co-workers has been getting easier, but I still gravitate to the younger therapists. It's also been somewhat of a task to work with RN's. I guess I didn't have much of a problem when I was a student, eager to do anything at a moments notice, but now that I have a full assignment it become increasingly hard to handle them treating me like a tech. It's been a process, and I'm still continuing to learn from it all.

My health care experience is still ever-growing. I'm mostly in the ICU's with a floor or two thrown in there. I finally took a full time position at the current hospital I'm at, and have absolutely no intent on leaving anytime soon. My days are still filled with vent checks and breathing treatments, but also an insane amount of critical care. I'm lucky to be in a place where the RTs are practically running codes.

So, to the topic of this post. Some people think it's silly that I have only been working in respiratory for a little over a year (counting some of my clinical rotations on this one), and have aspirations of going back to school. I can see their point, but I don't agree with it. We all know respiratory therapy has a ceiling, and after a few years of practicing you get the gist of it all. It will take a few years before I'm ready to even apply to physicians assistant school, but I plan on working full time all the way through the pre-reqs. I see it as a way to keep getting that valuable experience while still maintaining the goal of PA.

I'd much rather get finished with PA school before starting to plan a family, and that's been my main reasoning for starting back with class pretty soon after graduating. I could have done it earlier, but I wanted to wait at least a year before starting back. Good news is that most PA schools are great about accepting RTs into their programs. I've got a short list of ones I'm looking into right now (Mercer, MCG, Emory, MUSC etc.). I'd like to remain in Georgia, but I'm not opposed to moving if I'm accepted into a program out of state. I'll be sure to keep up a little dialog now and then on this whole journey of getting into a PA program. I tried searching in vein for a blog of any former RRT that went to PA school, but there's not a whole lot out there.

The personal life has been good. I finally feel comfortable in the relationship that I'm in (still the same guy I started to see before I went to France), and I see it going in a good direction. I'm just glad that both of us are insanely happy. That's the main thing to focus on. I'm probably going to be moving closer to the city in the fall. I tried the whole no roommate thing/living on my own and I got so bored/lonely fast. Im probably going to look for a living situation with a friend or two, because once I head back to school I'll be budgeting more carefully since I'm going to try and pay for it out of pocket for a while.

Anyway, I'm getting tired and I need to start working on dinner. Good night all, and I'm sure I'll be back sometime in the coming months with some updates.