Taking a break this weekend to write a post about week one and inform anyone interested in the program what to expect. I’m sure the way they run things change from year to year but for the class of 2021, this is what we spend our time doing. Now that I know my schedule and way around the HSC building (sort of) I’d like to give a little rundown on my weekly schedule plus some extra things we are expected to attend. The classes for the semester go like this:
Disease Mechanics discusses “General Pathology” which is studying the more common disease processes that cells often react to such as an infectious-bacteria and how our bodies change. Systemic pathology involves more specific disease processes on specific organs and are discussed in later courses. This is one of my favorite courses so far, and multiple instructors give lectures, so it keeps you on your toes! The other course is Anatomical Techniques. Basically, we learn how to gross and the proper way to make good decisions from the moment you receive a specimen, the process of dictating, and understanding how to set up the tissue for histologists and pathologists to make great slides to review for diagnostic purposes. PAs are the only ones to see the specimen’s details entirely so knowing what you are looking at, how to sample properly to show the relationship of the pathology and how to speak clearly and concisely is key. Many of my classmates have grossed before or are familiar with the histo side in this course, so I have a lot of practice to do. We all rotate through the Gross room with instructors to get one on one time to learn how to go through a whole process. We also visit the morgue for practice. We have our first session this week so to be continued! This class is different than a textbook and power point only class. A lot of critical thinking is combined with proper techniques and I feel like I’ve learned so much already in just a week! Anatomy is the next course. It’s divided into three sections, first is Microanatomy where we spend time with histologists teaching us in the scope room how to look at normal, healthy tissue structures. The basics in this class are critical. How do you know what a diseased tissue will look like if you don’t know what it’s supposed to look like normally? The next part is lecture, and our instructor is just as passionate about how cool our bodies are. He keeps it lively, but you’ll have a lot more studying to do than what undergad professors expected you to know. Hello, our job is knowing the body! The third part of anatomy is the cadaver lab. We are fortunate enough to have people donate their bodies to science so we can dissect and see the things we talk about in lecture such as muscles, bones, vessels and other intricate networks. Being a PA is gross, in many ways! So that course is a lot, but we see on a microscopic, physiological and gross level all the parts of the body from cell to organ system. The next class is Histology which is online with a few hours during the week to talk about what we learned on our own time. You learn about staining processes; tissue fixation and it seems to relate a lot so far to the techniques we use to gross and take samples and what happens in the processes after. We find out why the slides in microanatomy are colored that way and how they managed to not ruin the morphology creating these slides. Very cool stuff. Histotechs in my class will be my go-to tutors! The other class is an Educational Methodologies course that helps you learn how to teach and some psychological practices. We will do a big project where we become the teachers and make up a lecture. We also sit in on doctors’ conferences Thursday mornings with residents and rotate through an EM lab. Our schedules are very busy and weekends are filled with studying too, believe me you won’t want to cram. The most important thing I realized in just a week is that these instructors are training you to do a job. All material is relative to the job and the other courses. I often catch myself reading about cellular processes for my disease mechanics course and then go to the scope room and see the same material brought up there. We’ve learned about how to take samples to put them in cassettes for histologists and now we are learning why we needed to cut that tissue so thin. They aren’t here to waste your time, but you can’t waste yours either. Grasping the concepts and having the skills to learn the material that seem to hit all the basics transpires to higher levels of thinking when you are helping to find and recognize what went wrong with a person’s health. The key to getting through the heavy workload is to remember this is all necessary to further your knowledge about what you need to know for your job daily. You won’t be reading and writing papers about the Shakespeare play you had to do for a liberal arts degree. We all love this area of health science, and that is what makes studying a lot easier. Now, it is tough and stressful. They are big advocates for self-care. Step away from the textbooks and go for a run, meditate, don’t stop doing what you love. Find balance and stay healthy because you aren’t a robot although after week-one you might feel like one. I’ve set a personal goal to run the half-marathon in Pittsburgh with my dad again in May so that’s been my thing. Time management skills are critical here, and having fun learning this stuff is also what they want to see. I’ll let you know how first round of exams go in a few weeks. Say a little prayer for me!
On the Right Path(ology) 