Somebody had to fight for the scope of practice you're about to inherit.

Tracy Piparo has been a PA for over twenty years and has spent a big chunk of that time on advocacy in New Jersey, working on the state regulations that determine what PAs can actually do. Most of us benefit from that work without knowing it happened.

I wanted to have this conversation because pre-PAs tend to think of the profession as a fixed thing they're joining. It isn't. It's still being negotiated, state by state, and the people at the table are PAs who decided to show up. Tracy is honest about how slow and unglamorous that work is, and why it's worth it anyway.

You don't have to wait until you're licensed to pay attention to this. Knowing your state's rules is also a great interview talking point.

What we cover:

• How Tracy found the PA profession and what kept her in it
• What legislative advocacy for PAs actually involves
• Changes she's helped push through in New Jersey
• Why scope of practice varies so much between states
• How to get involved with your state and national PA organizations
• What twenty years in this career has taught her

Resources:

Free Application Timeline: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/free-application-timeline

PA Program Map: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-platform-map

Pre-PA Counseling: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/pre-pa-counseling

Pre-PA Academy: https://prepaclub.thepaplatform.com/landing/academy

Mentioned in this episode:

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I first met Tracy at a Pre PA conference in New Jersey and she gave the closing remarks and I thought it was amazing.

So I asked her to come on the podcast and she gracefully agreed.

And this episode is going to be so good.

Welcome to the Pre PA Club podcast.

If you want to learn how to.

Become a physician assistant, you're in the right place.

I'm your host, Savannah Perry.

Let's get to it.

Foreign.

Hey guys, welcome to the podcast.

Savannah Perry here, your PA host.

I am a derm PA part of the time, a Pre PA coach through the PA platform part of the time, a mom, a wife, lots going on.

But I am here this week on the Pre PA Club podcast to bring you our interview with Tracy.

So she is awesome, which you are going to find out.

You 100% need to go find her on Instagram.

I will tag her, but she has really cool hair, which we talk about, and she is just such a great advocate.

So that's what we're going to talk about is how she got involved with advocating for the PA profession, specifically PAs in her area in New Jersey and what that has looked like during her career.

So I'm really excited for you to hear from her.

Just an amazing PA with really great experience, awesome person to connect with, and I just.

That's part of why I love doing this podcast is having those experiences.

So we will get into that in just a second.

The one thing I wanted to point out for this week to make sure you know about is the best place to ask your questions and get reliable answers.

Because I know you have questions about this process.

I try my best to respond, but to be perfectly Honest, my Instagram DMs are a little out of control.

So you are welcome to send a message there, but.

And I will try to get to them as much as I can.

But another way to ask questions is on the PA platform.com There's actually a forum there where you can post anonymously.

I know a lot of people are concerned about sharing personal information and, you know, putting it out there for a lot of people to see.

So you're able to set up a username and account that's completely anonymous to ask your questions.

And that's a great place to, you know, connect with other Pre PA students or current PA students and try to get some of those questions answered.

The other place is the Pre PA Club on Facebook, and that's a Facebook group.

We are just shy of 15,000 members.

When I'm recording this, we probably will have hit it by the Time it airs, which is crazy.

15,000 People who want to be PAs.

I hope that doesn't intimidate you.

That should excite you because y' all can work together and help each other to reach those goals.

So check that out.

The links are in the description.

And if you ever need any help, you can also email me.

Infoepaplatform.com will come straight to me.

And I try to get back to all emails within a week.

And I'll try to help you out there if I can.

All right, well, we'll jump into our interview with Tracy, and I will talk to you guys later.

Bye.

I am Tracy Papero.

I have been PA.

This will be my 20th year.

Come June, it will be 20 years since graduation, which is very exciting.

I went.

I currently live in New Jersey.

I went to PA School in New York, to St. Vincent's Catholic Medical Center, Billy Seton Campus, which was in Staten island at the time.

It doesn't exist anymore.

I'm kind of a dinosaur.

So I only graduated with a PA certificate.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

It was not a master's program at the time.

We were one of the last classes to graduate without a master's, so I had a bachelor's prior to the program.

Right after school, I got a job doing emergency medicine in New Jersey, which is really what I wanted to do.

I did a lot of EMS stuff and some sports medicine stuff, college.

So I knew I was really interested in emergency medicine.

So I worked there for just about 16, 17 years.

Did nights transition to days once I had my kids.

And then past three years, I've been doing hospitalist medicine.

So I work for a private group with five physicians, and I cover all of our hospital patients between two hospitals in the same town.

So relatively close to one another.

It's in central New Jersey.

We have a pretty decent.

I mean, an easy week is maybe six or seven patients.

But, you know, we go up to 20, 24 patients sometimes, and pretty much three days a week, I'm rounding by myself.

They allow me to be pretty autonomous.

My group is really good, which is great, you know, and we kind of transitioned to that when I first started.

You know, we all rented together with the physician, and then, you know, kind of transition to.

All right, you're pretty comfortable with this relationship with all our consultants.

So it's worked out pretty well.

I like it.

And then in addition to doing the rounding stuff, I work with our care management department and kind of stay on top of patients, follow up proper transitions of care and just ensuring that people get you Know all the care they deserve.

A recent, I would say probably over the past two years interest that is kind of evolving is end of life care and like working on goals of care with patients and families, kind of pushing the importance of palliative care and then transitioning to hospice care when appropriate, to a huge Medicare population.

So that's, that's become kind of a personal and professional interest of mine.

Nice.

Yeah.

Personally, I live in New Jersey.

I got two little boys that keep me busy and a husband who's a career firefighter.

So it's busy.

Yeah.

He does 24 hour shifts.

So we kind of work around each other and kind of figure out childcare when we have to.

What is your schedule like in hospitalist medicine?

Yeah, so I work three days a week and pretty much, like I said, my group is really good to me.

It's a private group, so I do feel like.

Sometimes with some of my friends who work for the hospital system, self rounding when I can.

You know, some days I got to drop my kids off at school.

Well, the pandemic has kind of made that crazy.

Some days I have to drop my kids off.

So I may not start rounding until, let's say nine o'.

Clock.

But, but other days, you know, if my husband's off, I kind of get myself up early and I'll be at the hospital at 7:30.

But it gets hairy when you're busy because I'm basically there until I'm done rounding.

I'm done, you know, until I'm done seeing all the patients, until I'm done with my admissions and you know, if you have a great day where you get out of there a little bit earlier in the day, I do take call.

I take all the hospital calls until 4:30, any call, which is great.

And then one dome, technically for four days a week, which I like.

You know, coming from the ER where I was only working, you know, two to three days a week, 12 hour shifts, I was looking for something that definitely wasn't five days because I knew I would need that extra day to kind of do family stuff.

So this has worked out really well.

Nice.

Well, that's, that's really cool.

And you definitely took advantage of the lateral mobility of being a pa.

I've worked in Durham, but it's nice knowing that I could go to something else if I wanted to or needed to.

How did you become interested in becoming a pa?

Because I feel like even when I applied, which was 10 years ago, it was somewhat unknown.

Like people at.

I went to UGA which is a big school.

But people didn't really know what I was doing when I said I wanted a school.

So I can't imagine 20 years ago.

Yeah, I mean, it was really like, it's almost 22 years ago.

Almost 23 years ago now that I was applying.

Yeah, it was interesting.

So I went.

I went to a school really intent on, you know, when I got out of high school, went to a small college in Pennsylvania, was really intent on going to med school, you know, so I was the, you know, very generic biology major, taking all the proper prerequisites.

I kind of got to junior year and was like, I gotta take this damn mcat.

And, like, I made friends with.

For some reason that year, I happened to make friends with some people who were not science people.

You know, a couple of them were artsy people.

We were a big drama school, too, so.

And I just saw, like, their lives were really different than mine and my friends.

And it was interesting, but I was still like, oh, I'm still going to med school.

I got to senior year, all my prereqs were done.

You know, I had a great gpa, and I started studying for the mcat, and I actually registered to take a review course.

And the.

Maybe, I don't know, I guess it was four or five days before the MCAT review course was going to start.

And now, mind you, I'm living away at college.

I got to get myself to this review course, which is not on campus.

It's somewhere totally else.

I'm trying to, you know, get all my work done for.

I mean, I think senior year, taking, like, four classes that had labs in them.

And I looked around, and I'm not saying this in a bad way, but the people that I was doing this with, my other fellow science nerds, let's say, I looked at them like, I don't want to spend four more years like this.

Like, I cannot do this to myself.

I was miserable.

And the prospect of sitting and taking the mcat, not that it scared me, because I'm pretty sure I would have done well on it.

I'm a decent test taker.

I just could not emotionally and mentally see myself doing that.

There happened to be another woman that I was friends with, and we sat talking about it late one night.

I can distinctly remember, like, sitting outside of our dorm, and we were like, what else could we possibly do?

Like, we knew we wanted to do medicine.

We knew we didn't want to be nurses.

Not taking anything away from nurses, but, like, it was an idea that Was floated.

And I'm like, but I don't want to do that.

I want to make the decisions.

Right.

We kind of randomly went to the area hospital and again, I was in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania.

There was literally one hospital within an hour of us.

And we were like, what else could we do besides medicine?

And my friend happened to know somebody there and they introduced us to a PA and we were like, what do you do?

I had never ever heard of it.

And from then for the next three days, did all this research about how am I going to get into PA school?

What do I have to do?

I actually wound up converting the money that I paid to take the MCAT course to a GRE course because the schools I was applying to needed a green.

The worst part was telling my parents that I wasn't going to apply to med school.

I waited a couple of months and actually they came up to visit me and I was like, I have to tell you in person.

And it was awful.

It was absolutely awful.

They thought I was throwing everything away.

You know, if you talk to them now, they think it's fantastic.

But that was really hard.

And same thing like you said, like you went to a big school, but still a lot of people didn't know what a PA was.

I remember going to, you know, they had an entire department.

Granted it was only two people because our school was small, but they had a whole department for pre meds, you know, pre med advisors.

And I remember going and saying with my friend, we want to go to PA school.

Can you help us figure out how to apply?

And again, everything was on paper.

We didn't have CASPA back then.

And they told us no that they weren't, that that wasn't their job.

And I think about it now and I'm like, it was terrible.

You know, I only applied to four schools because I was in such a rush to get my applications out.

I was like, holy crap.

Like, let me just pick like these four schools and apply.

And it was the most nerve wracking thing where now, I mean, that's part of what makes me so happy is like people see what we do and are able to have it available as something other than medical school or other than nursing school.

Yeah, that's crazy.

And that, I mean, and what's crazy to me.

So it's interesting because we're like, you were 20 years ago, I'm like 10 years ago.

And then people now.

And it's, I mean it's definitely more, there's more recognition, but there's Still, I feel like so many people who would benefit from knowing what PAs are and knowing it's an option.

Right, right.

Just to check in.

I don't know if you see it a lot.

I mean, because you work a lot, you know, with people applying.

Like, I do still feel like in undergrads there's still that stigma of, like, oh, wait, you're not going to apply to med school.

Like, yeah, like, it's beneath you.

You know, I mean, I distinctly remember, like, being told that by, you know, family members, other friends who were applying to med school.

Like, what do you mean?

Like, why are you going to waste your time?

Like, you're, you're, you know, you're selling yourself short.

You should go to med school.

I'm like, I just don't want to do it.

And I'm like, I.

It's not what I want to do.

I wanted to practice medicine, but I didn't want to put myself through that.

And not that school was easy.

It wasn't.

But, you know, the other thing, thinking about medicine and now I think about it because I'm like, should I have gone to med school?

Like, we all have those thoughts.

But I look at it, it is that laterality, like that, that ability to change our specialties, that.

That's what, that's part of what has helped me.

If I would have been stuck in emergency medicine for more than 17 years.

I was burnt.

It was painful.

I was in fear of losing my marriage.

And I was able to kind of step back and readjust things, and I wouldn't have been able to do that if I was a physician.

Yeah.

No, I share very similar sentiments with you.

And that's what's.

Listening to your story.

I'm like, that was me too.

Like, I.

Because I was typical pre med biology major like you, and because it's all I knew, and I knew I didn't want to do nursing.

I just, I'm not that.

That's not my personality type.

I love, love it if it is.

My college roommate was a nurse and.

Yeah, but not for me.

And I.

And that's what I kind of found freshman year.

Was looking around at my biology classes.

It was already so competitive.

There are all these people, like, just, you know, I'm going to be a surgeon.

And like, really just.

I was like, this is not.

I don't think y' all are my people.

And so I.

And that's what I was like having these doubts and then actually shadowed.

It's interesting because I. Shadowed.

It sounds like something Similar to what you do.

She was a hospitalist medicine page, and.

She covered at four different hospitals.

So we would go and I would round with her and then sometimes we'd meet up with the physician and like, talk about things or switch off and some places they would go see certain people together.

And in doing that, that's why I was like, okay, this girl's awesome.

She's practicing medicine, she's doing what I want to do, and I don't have to go to med school.

And you'll do this and seen it firsthand.

I mean, for like, it's just.

It clicked for me.

It was a no brainer.

I totally understand.

There are some people who would only ever be happy being a physician.

And that's awesome.

We need doctors, obviously.

And so, yeah, I just.

It is crazy how the process.

And I like you, even 10 years ago, didn't have a great advisor.

Like, I remember going to her and saying, you know, I'm going to apply to PA school instead of medical school.

I need anatomy.

But for uga, for a biology major, anatomy was not included as a prerequisite or even a science course.

So I couldn't sign up for the class because all these other majors needed it.

And she's like, you don't really need that.

And I was like, no, no, I do.

I 100% do.

It's like the class I need.

Right.

I ended up having to take it elsewhere, and it counted as an elective, like the same as a history class.

And I was like, this makes sense.

Y' all are not helping me.

Hence why I try to help people now.

But I want to hear.

So now that you're well established in your job, I want to hear a little bit about kind of how you've gotten involved with advocacy for the profession and leadership.

So we were both at the New Jersey Preacher Conference, or North.

Was it Northeast Pre pa. Yeah.

And that was two years ago.

Two and a half.

Yeah.

But I have to tell you, so my husband was there with me and he's a hospitalist, he's a physician.

And his.

Your.

Your closing speech, like, completely inspired him.

It was very funny.

He was like, man, I need to join my societies.

Like, I need to do that.

Like, after hearing you talk, which I just thought was so funny.

So.

And I think at that time, like, you need to bring her on the podcast.

Like, she can inspire people.

So just so you know, even though he's not a pa, you've.

You have influenced someone in.

But yeah.

How.

How have you been involved and how Are you involved?

Yeah.

So as is.

So as a student, when our, our program we automatically, you know, you go through, they, they hand you a bill for Lord knows.

I mean even back then I was like, Jesus, a lot of money, right?

And one of the line items on there is was membership to nispa.

We didn't really have a choice.

It was, you were paying, you were a member.

Okay, I honestly can't remember.

I've tried to think about it.

I can't remember ever really like going to a conference or anything because I think at that time like, and of course social media wasn't around.

I didn't know anybody.

I knew the 35 people that I was in class with and I saw them every day and that was it.

And I put my head down, I studied and I got through class.

Once I got out it was like, all right, get a job.

I stayed a member of NISPA when I moved to New Jersey very shortly after graduation even I think the first two years I wasn't a member of anything because I didn't even think about it.

There was so much other stuff to think about.

Like I had to get a dea.

I had to get in New Jersey.

When I first started, we couldn't write for controlled substances.

And then all of a sudden within a year it was, I had to get a cds, a dea.

I have to maintain my license.

Oh my goodness.

I have to do this other paperwork for the hospital.

Like my head was spinning because these are all the things they don't tell you in school.

Now, three, four years into it, I met someone at work who was like, hey, you know, I go to these NAGISPA meetings.

And I was like, oh really?

And they were like, yeah, they try and hold them kind of all over New Jersey.

You know, maybe we'll take a ride one day.

I was like, okay, sure, what do I know?

So I did.

The next meeting came up maybe like a month later.

We drove up, it was like an hour from where we were working and I kind of just sat there and listened to, you know, they had in person meetings.

Granted there were not a lot of people there.

It was like this eight board members and a couple of other random folks like me that showed up and I just listened to what they were talking about and I'm like, oh, this is kind of interesting.

I didn't know what I was listening to.

I didn't know what I was going to do.

And I just kept in touch with the people there.

It was like, hey, you know, I remember the president at the time saying, like, here's my email.

Like, if you want to get involved, shoot me an email.

I probably didn't email her for a couple of weeks.

And then I was like, randomly, hey, you know, I met you a month ago.

You know, maybe I'll do something.

And I got involved initially doing CME stuff.

So I helped, you know, one of the other board members run a CME conference.

And I, again, didn't know what I was doing.

I had no idea how to apply for cme.

I hadn't done anything with the apa, but I was like, all right, you know, we'll do this, and you just get to network and meet other people.

I thought that was the most valuable thing.

Like, I got to meet other people who were practicing in New Jersey.

And at the time now, 15 years ago, there were not that many of us.

There still aren't that many of us.

New Jersey is a small state.

We.

We have less than 3,000 licensed PAs in the state.

You know, so the fact that I was just getting to, like, see other people that did the same thing that I did was.

Was really cool.

And I just stayed involved.

After I did three or four CME conferences, and then I was kind of like, okay, someone else has to be in charge of this.

You know, it's a lot of work, but you make connections.

You make connections with pharmaceutical companies, with different reps, with different speakers.

And I started through that.

I started getting really interested in the government affairs stuff.

I realized how important it was that things that happen at the legislative level are going to affect you for your entire career, and they're going to affect your ability to make money, they're going to affect your ability to practice medicine, and you could have a voice for that.

And not only affecting yourself, but all of these decisions that these legislators make who are not practicing medicine are going to affect how you can take care of your patients and your patients access to care.

So I started working with our government affairs committee and our lobbyist, who was phenomenal.

But, you know, that was like four years of just work of constantly talking about what a PA is, finding different mediums.

You know, again, social media wasn't that much of a thing.

It was going to meetings, meeting with the state representatives, and Being like, hey, ever heard of a pa?

I mean, they would literally tell you no that they've never seen one, because, again, it just was not a huge thing in New Jersey.

But I just realized the value of saying, this is what I chose to do for my career.

I want other people to be able to do this, and I want to advocate for that, but also for my patients.

Because if, you know, practicing medicine is taking care of people, you know, I can't take care of people unless you allow me to do what I've been trained to do.

But part of that is also empowering your patients, and you can't empower them unless you understand what's going on and what you have available.

So I think just getting involved and people say all the time, like, I don't know what to do.

I don't know how to do that.

Like, you're so awesome.

Like, you know, I testified in front of the health committee at the state capitol.

I can't believe you did that.

I would never be able to do that like that.

That's everything I heard after I put the post on social media.

I had no clue what I was doing that morning.

I remember walking out of my house and telling my husband, I have no idea what I'm doing.

I don't know what I'm going to say.

I had no idea what they were going to ask me.

I just put on some nice clothes and I got there, and I remember sitting in the chair shaking.

I said, I would be less nervous intubating somebody right now than I am sitting in front of, you know, senators waiting to ask me questions.

Oh, my gosh.

But you just like.

But then you just do it, and you're like, man, I did that because you just got to know what you do.

You know, you've already got through the hard part.

You graduated PA school, you got a license, you're seeing patients.

That's the hard part.

This stuff just, you know, sticking up for what you want to do is the easy part.

And then you make contacts.

You know, the amount of networking and contacts that I've made just from this.

And it doesn't always.

It doesn't just affect work.

It affects everything.

You know, I've made friends, like, lifelong friends of PAs that I would have never met if it wasn't for advocacy work.

Yeah, that is so awesome, though.

Yeah.

I feel like.

I do feel like.

Like you're right.

A lot of people want to do something or want to help or have great ideas, but just don't know how to act Right.

Since.

And I mean, we have a ton of great pre pas who are, you know, wanting to help do things.

PA students, pas.

I mean, what.

What does that look like?

How can, like, lesson hears, someone hears this, or here's see some.

Right.

I want to do that.

What, like, what can they do?

I mean, I think if it was me, I'll go to Google and probably just email everyone tells them I responded.

But.

Yeah, I mean, no, I think that's a great question.

I was just.

Actually, this came up the other night.

We were on a clubhouse, which I'm trying to navigate.

It's weird.

Jonathan Baker from New York, who's going to be the president of nispa, asked the question, right.

And similar question.

And I answered and I said, you know, just ask if you have a talent or something that you are interested in.

Your first place as a practicing PA other than aapa, I advocate that everyone become a member of aapa.

Listen, we may not all agree with everything that, you know, the organization is doing, but right now they are the ones.

They are the only people who are representing us on a federal level.

Then at your state level, that's your state organization.

There is nobody else out there who is paying attention to what is going on for PAs, specifically in your state, other than your state organization.

Right.

So, you know, send an email, contact us on the website, be like, I want to do something and this is what I can do.

I'm not saying you have to have a specific idea.

I have a pre PA student right now who had gotten in touch with us, who is great, you know, likes doing graphic stuff.

So if I want to put, you know, I try and do.

I'm doing lots of the social media stuff for Nagispo, which is scary.

Um, but I'm terrible at these things.

I'm terrible at graphics.

I. I have no, I can't make little pictures and memes, but if I need something, I'm like, hey, can you do this for me?

And because trust me, whatever, whatever it is that you like to do, we will find something for you.

You know, I don't want to turn away anybody's interest, but at that same time, like, I may have some thoughts in my head that I'm like, okay, this is a great idea.

I need someone to help me accomplish this.

I hope someone, like, says they want something to do, you just kind of run with it.

Because no one taught me any of this either.

Lots of this advocacy stuff and falling into these leadership positions is not because there's a class out there.

You Know, no one's saying 1, 2, 3.

This is because how you become an advocate, most of it is just finding really good people that you want to surround yourself with that are really good examples and saying, I want to do that and then just doing it, you know, if it goes wrong, like, just ask for forgiveness later, you know, you're not.

I rather piss someone off because I'm asking too many questions than not ask and then be like, man, I missed that opportunity, you know, again.

And sometimes.

And then things just materialize and fall in from there.

You know, we have great PA students now on our student committee for the state that are just, they're rocking it.

They're doing, you know, these, they're doing like meet and greets, like virtual meet and greets.

You know, they're doing virtual.

They're helping set up virtual shadowing.

You know, they're putting up, putting information on the website.

They're getting information from practicing pas about, you know, a day in the life.

Like, what do you do as a pa and that's awesome because you know what, us, like older people, like, I can't sit there and make a website.

But, you know, somebody who's in college or somebody who just graduated college probably knows it a lot better than me.

Like, when I was in college, I remember my first paper, term paper that I ever turned in.

I typed on a typewriter.

Like, you know, that's awesome.

I didn't even have a computer my whole freshman year.

Like, you're like, oh, I'm super high.

Tech with my typewriter.

Yes.

I tell my husband, I'm like, I was.

So I said, we were so, like, I mean, I grew up in Brooklyn, but we were so backwards.

I said, I remember I packed up my little typewriter in a suitcase and brought it to college with me.

I was like.

And that's how I typed a paper and hoped that my margins were okay.

You know, so anything, even if it's not, it doesn't have to be medicine related, like pre pas.

And I think students get scared because they're like, I don't know medicine yet.

Like, yeah, but I don't know social media.

So we could help each other.

It could be a symbiotic relationship.

So I think, I think that's a huge, that's a huge thing.

Like, I need your help just as much as you need mine.

Yeah.

Just getting, I mean, anything.

That's awesome.

Well, hopefully that will encourage people to take steps and reach out.

Yeah.

And I think, yeah.

And I think just not just not being Afraid, you know, perfect.

A good example.

Like I said, you know, testifying in front of the Senate.

Okay, Got past that.

You know, a global pandemic hits, and all of a sudden, it becomes painfully obvious in New Jersey that we have a problem, because the global pandemic comes in March.

We're gonna have students graduating in June, and nobody can get a license.

It's.

It's.

Prior to the pandemic, it was incredibly painful to get licensed in New Jersey to begin with, right?

Just.

I mean, jumping through hoops.

Everything was still via mail.

We don't even have an online process yet.

Yeah, I know.

It's crazy.

We're in, like, you know, the early 20th century.

And it started, you know, people started reaching out on Facebook.

Hey, I applied in January.

I just moved to New Jersey.

I have a job, and I want to work, and I can't because I don't have a license.

And I was like, oh, my God, what are we gonna do about this?

Like, we started getting all these emails through our website, you know, and I'm the in.

I was the president of NAJISPA up until June, and at the end of June, I became the immediate past president.

So, I mean, my inbox was flooding with all these messages, and I'm like, I mean, in one day, I had five people contact me.

Like, I can't get a New Jersey license.

I can't go to work.

The hospital's calling me because they want me to work.

And I was like, oh, my goodness, what are we going to do?

I just literally made myself the most painful person to the state of New Jersey.

I would get home from work every day and call the governor's office until somebody answered the phone.

And they'd be like, I can't really help you.

I'd be like, well, you have to find someone who can help me.

I sent an email to the governor's office every single day for about three weeks.

I went through their website and sent an email.

I sent an email from three different email addresses that I have.

Like, I contacted almost everyone I knew that worked in the state to be like, do you know anybody?

To the point where one of my friends works for, like, random Department of Transportation.

And she was like, I don't know if I can help you, but I'll talk to somebody.

And lo and behold, I finally get a call from, like, the deputy director of health, and he's like, I heard you're looking for somebody.

How can I help you?

And it just took off from there, you know, to the point where I was able to provide him with a list of over 60 people who were waiting for licenses for over six months.

And, you know, within seven weeks, everybody had a license.

That is wild.

But I didn't know what I was doing.

I just knew I have to, like, make inroads somewhere.

You know, I would just call there.

There's one phone number to call to get in touch with the PA advisory committee.

I just call the phone every day.

Yeah.

Half the time nobody answered.

But come to find out nobody's answering because the state won't let anybody come to work.

They were working from home, so now they're forwarding phone calls and they can't answer.

Come to find out, half these licenses weren't being processed because we have to apply via mail.

And the mail is in a totally different building in Trenton, New Jersey.

And nobody had checked the mail since March because people were on furlough.

So nobody checked the mail.

It's not an excuse.

And I mean, definitely, I feel bad for people who could not work because of this, but they weren't going to notice that unless somebody told them.

Right.

You know, as the president of the state organization, I just felt this huge, huge responsibility to be like, I gotta find a way to make this work.

But nobody told me how to do that.

Like, that's my point to everyone.

It's like, you just gotta figure it out and don't be afraid.

And you will be amazed at what you can accomplish that.

I mean, that is amazing.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

And I'm all for.

Like I said, you have an idea.

I will help to point you in the right direction.

Yeah, we all, like, I think.

And I think that's across the board, like, any pa, especially on social media or one that, you know, like, I see a lot of times in pre pas, like you said, they're afraid.

I think they're afraid mainly of inconveniencing someone.

Right, right.

But I would also say, for the most part, like, PAs love their jobs and want to, you know, talk about it or help you or point you in the right direction or connect you with somebody.

So, I mean, like, the worst thing that happens, I just doesn't respond or says, I can't.

You, like, sometimes you ask me things that I can't help them with.

They'll say, do you know a PA in Timbuktu who works finger surgery or something?

I'm like, I'm sorry.

Like, I don't.

I don't know that.

But, yeah, I think.

Jonathan, I think John Baker made the Point to the other day, he was like, just reach out to us.

You know, send an email to your state organization.

Remember, we're all volunteering.

Like we're volunteering to run these things.

I may not email you back right away, but I swear to God, at some point I'm going to email you back.

If you're really, you know, if you really want to email me again and be like, hey, I just want to stay in the top of your inbox.

I will eventually email you back.

And like you said, sometimes people ask me these bizarre questions and I'm like, whoa, I have no idea.

You know, I'm not an expert in how to get into PA school.

Just like I've never done caspa.

I couldn't tell you the first thing about it, but I've had people ask me and I'm like, hey, there's this chick, her name's Savannah.

You should go follow her, you know, or there.

You should look this up on the Internet.

And sometimes it's like they had no idea.

Yeah, but they just knew.

I'm a pa. Oh, Tracy's a pa. Let me ask her.

She must know this.

And I'm like, I may not know it, but I will help you find the answer.

You figure it out.

Yeah, same, I think at the conference, maybe I made this up, but I think you talked about at one point, like the numbers of PAs that were part of your state society, and I think at the time it was pretty low.

Has that changed or so.

Yeah, I am happy to say so.

Like I said, we're just under.

We may have just crested 3,000 licensed payers pas in New Jersey.

So, you know, as I've come to learn, like any, any organization, you always, you know, textbook numbers.

You want to shoot for 10% of your, of your possible membership.

Right.

So really it would be nice to have, you know, 300 active members.

Let's say we were, I mean, I think at the time of the conference to two years ago, we were barely breaking 250.

And that was counting pre pas pa students, which still is a huge bulk of our membership.

And that's why we're really working to be able to offer more things to them with the idea that, hey, if we grab them now and we make them understand how important their membership is, they're going to stay with us.

Right.

We're going to get them when they're newly practicing PAs, we're going to get them involved when they finally have time and their head is back above water.

So we worked really hard the past two, three years on membership and trying to get things together that we can offer them because it's really hard to say, become a member.

We know we're doing stuff right.

Lots of this advocacy and leadership work is in the shadows.

It's just like PAs in general.

We do all this work, but some people don't realize that we exist.

We can't build certain things.

We can't.

So a lot of it, that's how I feel.

Like I come home and do a bunch of phone calls and stuff, but nobody sees it.

I don't log it anywhere.

I'm not getting paid for it.

So we worked really hard to kind of offer some more informative things for our members.

And we're now, as of the other day, we're.

We're very close to 500, which is phenomenal, you know, and people have to remember it's.

Everybody talks about money, right?

And I know the pandemic has been really, really hard.

And I can, to some extent, you know, commiserate with people and empathize with folks.

You know, I, like I said, I worked for a private group.

It got really hairy there for a while, and for five months, I was furloughed 25%.

So I lost 25% of my hours, 25% of my pay.

And listen, it was rough.

I would have never not paid my APA dues or my NAJISPA dues, because that is the most important thing for me being able to get through this pandemic and for me having a job.

So lots of it is prioritizing.

So I think it's really big that we're able to still increase our membership numbers even through the pandemic.

And I think part of that is because people, you know, we've been better about sharing information, getting a newsletter out, and really showing them what we're doing for them.

But on top of your membership, I think the other important thing is to remember to support that political action committee, whether it be AAPA or your state organization.

Right now, like I said, we don't have much going on in the.

But, you know, when we were doing that and updating our regulations and our practice mandate, I mean, we spent tens of thousands of dollars.

10.

It was crazy.

I mean, just have a lobbyist put it in perspective.

In New Jersey, east coast is expensive, you know, is over.

It's over $70,000 a year, you know, so figure that out.

You know, when a membership only costs $120 $550.

Like, you need a lot of members just to pay that.

Yeah.

So our numbers are definitely better.

And I will say the pre pas and the PA students are huge.

Huge.

They're just, you know, we have five.

Oh, man, I got to count five programs in New Jersey.

The importance of having students as members cannot go unnoticed.

And, you know, we only have two programs that actually make membership mandatory.

So lots of it is really working with those other programs and the other students.

We have student reps from every program.

And we really hammer home, like, you got to get your friends to join, you know, and they got to understand the importance of it, because if they don't understand the importance now, they're not going to when they start working.

Working.

No, I.

That's what you said.

I mean, creating advocates basically from an early, early point, is there.

So from what I understand, and this could be wrong, or I say it wrong, but how many members are in your state?

Society is important in an AAPA sense when it comes to voting.

Is that correct?

Right.

I've talked to my Georgia representatives about this, and she was trying to explain that.

Yeah, so they do.

So when they have HOD, you know, our House of Delegates for APA, you get your delegate number based off of the PAs in your state.

Okay.

They do take into account how many, you know, licensed PAs are in the state, but it goes by really, how many of the PAs in your state are AAPA members.

So if you have this huge state, or even take New Jersey, which is not that big, we have 3,000 PAs, let's say.

But if only 100 people are members, we may only get one vote.

But whatever we vote on is gonna affect those 3,000 people in New Jersey.

And I think sometimes that's a really good point, Savannah.

I think people forget that it's just like the government of the United States.

You forget that you're electing these people on your behalf.

You know, all these big things happening in AAPA now, you know, I know we don't want to go into the name change thing and all that stuff, but there's going to be some big, important votes happening, you know, at the conference in May.

And, you know, we've been discussing this actually in our past two meetings.

We have our hod.

They come to our meetings and we talk about it.

And, you know, they may have personal feelings, but ultimately they need to vote how New Jersey wants them to.

So we need everyone to really have a voice in that.

But you can, unless you're participating as a member.

You know, and.

And again, it goes for a lot of people.

I know it goes back to money.

I've heard multitude of excuses, multitude.

And I'm not being crass, and I'm not trying to be nasty, but we.

I do feel confident, especially in New Jersey.

I don't know how it is in.

In where you are saying that our membership dues are $150.

If you are a practicing PA in New Jersey, there is no reason why you should not be able to pay $150 a year to ensure that your profession is being represented legislatively and nationally.

I think it's a small price.

We all know, you know, yes, there are plenty of PAs out there making tons of money, and there are some, you know, working part time, maybe not making the best hourly or the best salary, but $150 in the grand scheme of things is not a lot to ask for for.

For what you get in return.

You just have to.

You.

You have to believe in the benefit of it.

And I do think, like, again, that's why it's important to get students, because if you can show them, when they're a student, why it's important, it's.

You have them hooked, you know, And I totally understand people who are new PAs being like, I just don't have the time to help you right now.

I get it.

We have students that help us, and then, you know, their involvement kind of drops off for a couple of years.

And I get it.

Like, you're working.

It's the first time you're in any specialty, any sort of medicine.

Like, man, that's all you care about.

Like, you care about going to work and not killing anybody.

Right?

So.

And I'm okay with that.

I am totally okay with that.

But when your head pops up from the water and you're able to look around again and take a breather, I want you to remember that we were there for you and that you need to now represent for all the people coming after you.

Yes.

That is.

Yes.

I hope this.

There's lots of pre PAs and PA students who listen to this and get that message.

Okay, well, I want everyone to follow you on Instagram so they can come to you with all their ideas and questions and so they can see your awesome hair, because you talked about that in New Jersey too, and I think showed us a lot of great.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm the one out there with the hair and tattoos.

I don't think I can fully explain this to the podcast, which right now is not too, not too Wild.

It's not too bad right now.

Yeah, it's pretty thin.

It's pretty tame.

It's usually some shade of purple.

It's usually shaved on the sides.

When I let it.

The pandemic really did me in, man.

I.

It was awful.

My kids at one point were like, mom, when are you getting your hair done?

Oh, man.

Yeah.

Thank God.

For about four months, I wore a hat to work because I wore a surgical cap because I was like, okay.

And if anybody had seen my.

And it's funny because, you know, patients love it.

Like I said, I have crazy old people and just patients that, you know, I readmit all the time.

I would love to hear their comments.

They love it.

You know, when I walk in and my hair is not done, they're like, tracy, you know, the old bds are the best.

My little elderly folks, they're like, you need to go get your hair done.

Like, I know.

Yeah.

So I'm on Instagram.

I am at mama of Finn and Dex.

You can follow nagispa@njsspa on Instagram.

I will admittedly say I am not the best at social media, but I try.

I, you know, kind of pull from a lot of other places.

Aapa, you know, various other PA leaders that are out there really killing the social media space.

You know, Mike Sacks, John Baker.

There's just sparkles and scalpels.

Like, there are tons of people out there just killing social media.

I am by no means that person, but like I said, you know, reach out.

And I see myself more as like the.

The connector.

I could totally connect you with people who are better at lots of things.

Than I am, for sure.

Well, I'll put all of that in the description so we can find it easily, but yes.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you, Sam.