Healthcare experience and patient care experience are not the same thing, and programs absolutely care about the difference.

This one's from my webinar series. I break down what counts, which jobs get you there fastest, and how to log everything on CASPA so your hours actually land where you want them.

What I cover:

• The real difference between healthcare experience and patient care experience
• Why programs set separate hour requirements for each
• Jobs that count, including CNA, medical assistant, EMT, and scribe
• How long certification takes for each of those roles
• Categorizing your hours correctly on CASPA
• Documenting hours and supervisor contacts as you go instead of at the end

Resources:

Free resume download: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/free-resume-download

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

CASPA GPA calculator: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-school-caspa-gpa-calculator

One-on-one pre-PA counseling: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/pre-pa-counseling

Welcome to episode 43 of the Pre Pa Club podcast.

Today we're talking about healthcare experience and patient care experience for PA school.

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.

Hey guys, my name is Savannah.

I am the host of the Prepa Club Podcast.

Thank you so much for joining me on episode 40.

So we made it this far and if you aren't already subscribed to the podcast, if you want to get episodes downloaded straight to your phone, you can subscribe on itunes.

They also upload each week to the PA platform, so make sure you don't miss that.

And if you've enjoyed the podcast, go ahead, give us a review on itunes.

It helps more people find it.

But I'm really excited for what we have coming up for the next few weeks.

If you're just tuning in, then I should inform you that I am very pregnant.

If you've been following me on Instagram, you have probably seen that.

But in the next few weeks, I.

I will be having a baby girl.

And going on maternity leave.

But I don't want to leave you guys hanging because you guys need information and luckily I have some really cool stuff for you.

Alright, so for the next few weeks, as I am preparing for this baby, I am going to share some content with you that I've actually created over the last year.

I did some webinars on YouTube and they're still there.

The links will be in the descriptions for each of these, but.

And if you've listened to other ones, you can probably jump ahead a little bit.

But I've done different topics ranging from pre PA stuff, talking about PA school, talking about being a dermatology PA and there's some really good Q&As at the end and just great information.

So I wanted to integrate that into the podcast.

So for these next few weeks, you're going to hear those webinars and if you'd rather watch them on YouTube, you can do that.

Like I said, it's in the description.

But they're a little bit long, they're longer than normal episodes, they're about an hour.

I say that, but a lot of my interviews are an hour or two.

But anyway, I try to keep it at 30 minutes.

I know that doesn't really happen.

If y' all need me to do.

Better, let me know.

But if you need to break it.

Up, just know they are a little bit longer and yeah.

So I just wanted to share these with you and I felt like it was a good time to introduce them since I'm going to be a little preoccupied, but I hope you enjoy and we'll just jump right in and then I'll still hopefully be around on social media and reachable by email and those types of things.

So if you need me, I'm there.

And I hope that y' all get a lot out of these webinar episodes and then we'll be back with interviews and all kinds of stuff.

Really actually fun stuff this summer.

So I'm excited, but let's jump in.

Hey, guys.

If we haven't met before, I'm Savannah and I am the founder of the PA platform.

If you can't hear me for some reason, somebody please let me know in the chat or if anything's acting up.

If you're having any technical difficulties, I would like to know.

But tonight we're going to be talking all about healthcare experience and patient care experience for PA school.

We're going to jump right in so that I can tell you all the information that I have and and hopefully answer some questions that you may have a disclaimer.

I have done a ton of research on this.

I've been through it myself.

But I do not claim to be an expert or know exactly what every school is looking for.

That being said, I'm going to do my best to give you the most accurate information that I have available.

So with that, let's jump right in to talking about healthcare experience and get your questions ready.

Give them to me in the chat.

If there's any issues with the chat, let me know.

I know the first webinar, there was some issues there.

So here we go.

All right, so we are talking about healthcare experience.

So to start out, why is this important?

So when you start looking into PA school, you're gonna hear a lot about the need for healthcare experience, the need for patient care experience, and you may be wondering, why is this so important?

Medical school doesn't really require this.

Nursing school doesn't really require this.

Why does PA school think this is so important?

Here are some reasons, the number one being that many schools require it for admission.

If you want to be admitted into a PA program, you pretty much have to have some type of experience in the healthcare field.

This helps to confirm your interest in medicine.

Make sure that you are jumping into something that you're really interested in, jumping into something that you actually are passionate about.

This also helps you to develop skills.

So when you're required to get a certification or work closely with patients.

You're going to learn about patient care and you're going to learn about interacting with patients, become comfortable with patients, but also develop skills like interacting as part of a team, which is a huge part of being a pa, and then doing things like vitals, drawing blood, just skills that help to make sure that you are doing something that you're going to love for a very long time.

And then healthcare experience can also be a way to balance your application.

So let's say that you have a GPA that's slightly lower, had a few Cs, not really happy about that.

Sometimes you can use your experience as a counterbalance to a low GPA or some type of discrepancy on your application.

So that is also a benefit to having a good amount of hours or having high quality patient care.

So first, let's define health care experience versus patient care experience.

When I applied to PA school, I don't even feel like this was that big of a deal.

But since then, it's become a huge differentiation on caspa.

With schools, they want you to be able to classify your information a little bit better.

And sometimes you'll see healthcare experience abbreviated to hce.

I think I may have done that in this presentation.

And then patient care experience as pce.

So if you're on forums, if you're reading about PA stuff and you see those abbreviations, that's what this is referring to.

Let's look at the CASPA definitions and to touch a little bit on caspa's role in this.

About a month ago, right before CASPA opened.

And CASPA is the general application portal for PA school.

If you didn't know that, and I did a presentation on that last month, CASPA made a change to their experiences that made a lot of people angry.

Basically they moved CNA and Medical Assistant down to healthcare experience and took it out of patient care experience.

If you're reading this and I'm about to read it to you, you'll notice that CNA has now been moved back to patient care experience.

So this is something that's always changing, always being adjusted.

There's no perfect answer.

It's not black and white.

So don't let changes like that freak you out or make you fret about what your experience is.

So.

And we'll talk about that a little bit later, but CASPA defines patient care experience as experiences in which you are directly responsible for a patient's care.

For example, prescribing medication, performing procedures, directing a course of treatment, designing a treatment regimen, actively working on patients as a nurse, paramedic, EMT, CNA, phlebotomist, physical therapist, dental hygienist, etc.

So this is an interesting definition because you may be thinking how would I be prescribing medication in any of these roles?

And I agree with you, I don't know.

And so it's a little funny that these would be the parameters that they've set for patient care experience.

Healthcare experience they define as both paid and unpaid work in the health or a health related field where you are not directly responsible for a patient's care but may still have patient interaction.

For example, filling prescriptions, performing clerical work, delivering patient food, cleaning patients and or their rooms, administering food or medication, taking vitals or other record keeping information, working as a scribe, CNA, medical assistant, etc.

What's interesting is they did add scribe specifically to healthcare experience since that last change.

So the difference here, the main difference is that in patient care experience you are directly responsible for a patient's care.

That means that you're having a hands on interaction with the patient and that you are doing something to provide care for them.

And this can still be a gray area.

So you may be a medical assistant and you may do a ton.

I work in dermatology and my medical assistant that I work with, her name's Taylor, she's done some guest post on my blog and she's applying to PA school.

She interacts with patients a ton.

I mean she can write a whole note, she takes their history, helps them with procedures, she counsels patients, she does so much.

And so there's no way that her experience is not direct patient care experience.

But let's say that you're a medical assistant who just really does paperwork that you just do prior office all day that would probably be more considered healthcare experience.

And so it's going to be up to you to differentiate.

And thank you to Karina who emailed me and pointed out the new change in caspa.

I had another student who called and they were told that with these changes medical assistant, they meant that a front office medical assistant is healthcare experience, but a back office medical assistant is patient care experience.

Now I don't see that in these definitions, but if you have any questions, you can always clarify with CASPA and clarify with your program, which again, we'll talk about more later.

Okay, so the big question, does Casper have the final say on what your experience counts as?

Nope, they don't.

So CASPA is just something it's Just a way to generalize, basically, and put all the information in one place.

But that does not mean that it's the end all, be all.

It's really up to each specific program.

So this is where you're going to have to do your homework, do some research and see what each program classifies.

Experience as scribe is a huge one.

That's a little bit controversial because some places consider healthcare experience, some places consider it patient care experience.

It really just depends on each program.

So I'm telling you that you need this experience.

Where are you going to find it?

Let's talk about the available options.

Let's start with patient care experience options.

So CNA Certified Nursing assistant.

This is what I did to get my experience because I was in undergrad when I was applying to PA school and I needed something that was quick.

The training to be a CNA tends to be pretty fast.

You can find things that are flexible.

The program that I did, I drove to Atlanta every weekend for about three months and did my clinicals during spring break.

They also had two week courses.

Three week courses.

It was definitely a quick option.

And then I worked in a rehab hospital as a cna, sometimes a patient care tech.

That's basically the same as a cna.

You may be able to get hired without a certification for that.

A little bit easier.

Medical assistant.

I put this under patient care experience because I feel like most of the time as a medical assistant, you are directly involved with patient care.

This is something the certification process is a little bit longer.

It can be six months to a year, sometimes even more, a little more costly, longer, but great experience.

You're going to be able to do more as a medical assistant than you are as a cna.

I mean, ma, some of them can inject, do injections, vaccines, be a little bit more involved.

Then you get into emt.

There's a lot of different levels of emt, and I'm not going to pretend I know them all.

And I know paramedic is one of those.

You get to do a lot more as a paramedic than you do as an emt.

And this is going to depend also on your state.

From the people I've worked with, I've found that each state has kind of their own EMT classifications, but usually you're going to have more skills than you would as a CNA or an MA ER tech, and you can do that as an emt.

That's a great certification to have if you want to work in the ER nursing.

There's a lot of different Nursing degrees that you can get.

Respiratory therapist, physical therapist.

I actually have never heard of a physical therapist who went to PA school, but if anyone has, I would love to hear about that.

But you can work as a PT aide and then phlebotomy, so drawing blood, doing venipuncture, that type of thing.

That's.

Those are great skills to have for PA school healthcare experience.

And these, just FYI, these categories are not concrete.

I'm not saying this is the way it is for everything.

This is just some general categorizations.

Schools may have different feelings about this, but.

So don't, don't get mad.

So healthcare experience, I included scribe here.

Front office, medical assistant, anything with billing and coding.

In a healthcare experience, you're just working in the medical field, but not necessarily directly with patients, so.

Or if you are, you're not doing as much.

So pharmacy technician.

Yes, you're giving technically patients medication, but you're not really interacting with them in a patient, patient provider type of way.

Patient sitter, hospice volunteering, mental health worker, which that could sometimes be patient care experience, just depending on how involved you are with the actual patients.

If you're just doing paperwork, it's more healthcare experience, Patient transport, clinical research, and then a hospital volunteer, where again, you're in the healthcare setting, not necessarily directly involved with patient care.

Options that programs may consider as patient care experience, may consider as healthcare experience.

You just have to check with each program.

Podiatry tech, hospital corpsman, chiropractic assistant, acupuncturist.

We actually had a girl who had done acupuncture in my PA class, so I guess for her it counted.

Athletic trainer.

And from what I've heard, athletic trainers have a lot of experience with patients.

But again, I just feel like that's going to depend on each program.

Dental hygienist.

You're definitely interacting with patients.

It's just directed towards only one body system, the mouth.

And so schools may be that differently.

EKG tech, anything with EKGs is great experience for PA school.

Ultrasound tech, same thing.

Great experience.

Medical interpreter.

Being bilingual is a plus, and so this is not a bad thing.

Surgical tech or a personal trainer, they're just some more options for you.

So let's talk about certification versus no certification.

Most likely you will need a certification to get a paid direct patient care job.

That is not the rule.

If you work hard enough, there's a chance you could get a job that provides you with patient care without the certification.

Again, Taylor, who I work with, the medical assistant, she is not certified.

She Has a PR degree, but she started working as a receptionist in our office and did so great and was so good at what she was doing and just caught on really quickly that she was very quickly moved to a role as a medical assistant and just trained in that role.

And now she's going to go to PA school.

You also want to use any connections that you have if you're trying to get a job without certification.

So we'll talk about that a little bit more later.

The bottom line, any certification that you have will give you more options and give you better options.

So it may cost a little money, it may take a little bit longer, but if you're struggling to find a job, look into certification programs.

I found the best way to do that is just Google.

Whatever you're looking for, google it in your area.

See what there is available.

You may have to do what I did and drive an hour and a half each weekend to get it done, but having that piece of paper and that training will open up a lot of doors for you.

So where do you find these jobs?

This is just a random picture of a search I did in Birmingham, Alabama for a CNA job.

And there were so many.

This was on Indeed.com.

If I were looking for a job, I would apply to every single one that I could find.

My theory is that eventually someone will have to say yes.

And a lot of times people want to hire pre PA students.

They know that you're motivated, they know you're going to work hard, they know you're intelligent.

And even though you may be there for a short period of time, a lot of times they want those types of people.

You may have to commit to a year or two and let them know that you might be leaving, but it's still fine to let them know.

So look at job boards in your area.

Look at just Google searches.

I'm a really big fan of Google cold calls.

So use the phone book.

Open up the phone book and call offices in your area and just ask if they're hiring.

Are you hiring a medical assistant?

Are you hiring a cna?

Can I send you my resume?

Show that motivation.

Show your determination and your work ethic, even in your job search.

Hospital listings.

Every hospital is going to have listings of jobs.

When I was in undergrad and MPA school, I was constantly looking at jobs.

Usually trying to find PA jobs, but constantly.

Like I applied to so many jobs when I was trying to get experience.

Use your contacts.

This is going to be the most helpful.

Probably if you know anyone who works in the medical field in any capacity, reach out to them.

Having a reference, a personal reference, gives you such a benefit when you're trying to get a job.

So reach out to those people.

It may be a little bit awkward, you may not want to, but those people can help you to get a job.

Okay.

Is one type of experience better than another type?

So if you're trying to decide between what certification you want to do, the answer is yes, absolutely.

The more patient care that you are doing in your job is better than a job where you're doing less patient care.

So going back to that screen with all the jobs on it, an EMT is going to be higher quality patient care than a cna.

A nurse, a registered nurse is going to be higher quality patient care than a medical assistant or an emt.

A paramedic is going to be better than an emt.

So the more certification you have, the more training you have, the better across the board.

How do you know how to classify your experience?

So let's say that you are a medical assistant who works part of the time up front and part of the.

Time in the back.

How do you do?

How do you handle that?

So you have to look at CASPA's guidelines versus your program's guidelines, because ultimately it is your choice.

You decide where to put your hours, evaluate your responsibilities, and be able to explain them very well.

CASPA gives you the opportunity to put the details of your experiences.

And so use that space.

Describe your role, describe what you did, describe what you learned, especially if you're trying to decide what type of experience something is.

So if you going back to, if you're a front office and a back office medical assistant, you're going to have to split those hours up.

You can't double dip on hours.

You can't put it under healthcare experience and patient care experience.

Let's say that you have a thousand hours and you're half and half.

Half is healthcare experience, half is patient care experience.

Put 500 hours under healthcare experience.

Explain what you do in that capacity, but 500 hours under patient care experience and explain your role directly with patients.

So just be really cautious when you're deciding, but know that a lot of programs go back and look at your healthcare experience and your patient care experience and how you've entered it and they reclassify it for themselves.

So don't fret over feeling like you're going to mess up or you're going to enter it wrong.

And they're not going to know that you have these hours.

They're Going to look at it.

Just do your best to put it where you you feel like it fits the best and where it fits the best with CASPA or the program's guidelines.

And also, you're probably applying to more than one program.

If you're applying to 10 programs, it's unlikely that they all have the exact same requirements.

There may be, if you're ascribed.

One may call it healthcare experience, one may call it patient care experience.

Look at what you actually do.

Look at caspa, look at the programs you're applying to, and decide where that experience fits in the best.

Okay.

What information do you need to be keeping track of?

The sooner you start doing this, the better.

So I've created an Excel sheet that you can download.

I put the link in the description and you can get it from my website as well.

And I've broken it up into categories.

I'll show it to you in a minute.

But this is the log.

These are all of the different categories that you'll need to enter on caspa.

So whenever it is time to apply, these are the things that you'll have to put in.

So I've put all those in so that it's easy for you to keep it all organized.

These are some questions that I get a lot or I've gotten recently.

Can I count my training as hours?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

It's going to depend on the program.

You would have to enter that in separately.

So you would enter in, let's say, EMT training 100 hours.

That would not be paid, that would be unpaid hours.

And you'd want to make sure you clarify that that was AS training so that the schools would know when they're looking at it.

Does shadowing count as healthcare experience or patient care experience?

Usually no.

There are a few exceptions to that.

There are some schools that will count either all of your shadowing as healthcare experience or 50 hours, or they'll just kind of pick and choose.

But usually that's gonna be separate.

And that is a separate section on CASPA shadowing needs from the shadowing section.

How many hours do I need?

This question is kind of funny to me.

You want as many hours as possible, but how many do you need?

You need to meet the minimums of the programs you're interested in.

So if a school wants a thousand hours, you need a thousand hours.

They probably won't even look at your application if you apply with less than that.

So that can change where, depending on where you're at in this cycle.

I mean, if you've been Working for a long time, that's going to just give you more opportunities and more schools that you can apply to because the more hours you have, the more schools you're going to qualify for.

So you need as many as you can get.

And this is a question I just got an email on.

Is an activity assistant direct patient care?

I feel like I would need a little more information on what an activity assistant does.

In my mind I'm thinking this is somebody like at a nursing home who organizes activities.

And to me that would be more healthcare experience because it's not really involved in the patient's care.

You're involved with patients in a healthcare setting, but it's not really contributing to their care.

Okay, where can you find more information?

So my website@the pa platform.com and I'm also on Instagram at the PA platform.

I'm pretty active on there dose of pa.blogspot.com that's a site run by my friend Paul and he does an amazing job.

He has some of the most thorough posts ever.

I got a lot of this information from him and it's a great resource to check out if you have any questions about PA stuff.

And he just graduated this year.

The CASPA FAQ is the best it.

They go over everything and then if you ever have a question, you can call caspa.

So don't neglect that each program's website.

If there are programs that you're seriously interested in, take the time to check out their websites and make sure that what you're doing goes along with what they want you to be doing.

Okay, here's some contact information for me and then I'll close this out and show you a couple things and then we'll get to some questions.

So that's my website and my email.

You can always email me and then you can find me on Instagram.

So I'm gonna get out of this.

There you go.

Okay, so this is the experience log.

So if you look up here, I have patient care experience, healthcare experience, volunteering, shadowing, non healthcare or patient care jobs, and then honors and awards.

So this is what it looks like.

And then you can just click on each section and fill it in and just save that as you go.

This is.

I have a max.

So this is in the numbers thing, but it's saved as an Excel file.

So if you go to download that and I can show you, I believe, where to do that.

Sorry, this is going to look crazy for a minute.

Here we go.

So if you click on that link in the description this is what it'll take you to.

And you can download that.

It'll send it straight to your email.

Okay, let's see.

I'm gonna get out of here.

Okay, so we have a question.

Let's see.

Stephanie Rawls.

Hey, Savannah.

Do you think an optometrist technician will satisfy as patient care experience or healthcare experience?

This is going to depend on what you do in that role.

If you are directly working with patients, if you're taking patients back, if you're running tests on them.

That terrible thing where you blow air in someone's eye or dilating people's eyes.

Nobody likes this stuff, or I don't.

But if you're doing that type of thing, that is definitely direct patient care.

If you're just putting a patient in a room and not really talking to them or not really helping with the exam or anything, that's probably just healthcare experience.

You're just in the area in the field more.

So than actually contributing to a patient's care, it's just gonna depend on your role.

And if you wanna tell me more about that, and let's see if anyone else has any questions, go ahead and put them in the chat now.

And I did want to let y' all know that since you're tuned into the webinar, I offer pre PA assessments on my website, which means that we sit down together and go through everything that you've done, all of your experiences to determine whether or not you're ready for PA school and what you could do to be a better qualified candidate.

So if that's something that you are interested in or have been looking at, I encourage you to go look at it because I've put it on sale on the website for the next 24 hours.

So I'll show you all where to find that real quick.

I can screen share again.

There we go.

Okay, so if you go to my website and you go to services and you go to the pre PA assessment, you will find it on sale.

And like I said, that'll only be for 24 hours.

For the people who it's not coming up yet, but for the people who have tuned in.

So, yeah.

Oh, you're welcome, Stephanie.

Sounds like you have definitely a patient care experience job.

Well, if there's no more questions, I'll go ahead and wrap it up here, but feel free to email me.

Find me on Instagram.

Check out my last video about about caspa.

I did another one about personal statements.

And then next month's webinar will be.

Oh, we got a question.

I'll use that in a second, but next month's webinar will be June.

Oh, when is it?

Let me look.

Be June 18th.

So June 18th at 8pm and I'm going to be talking about how to prepare for PA school interviews.

So make sure you watch that or put on your calendar.

This question from Violet.

I like your name.

Hi Savannah.

What about us?

CNAs, LNAs, PCTs on hospital floors, vitals care, etc.

I'm a tech in post op.

If it changes anything, again, you have to look at your specific duties.

What all are you doing for a patient?

If you are considered, if you feel like you're considered as part of the team, if you are contributing to the patient's care, kind of have somebody that you're reporting to about that patient.

Usually if you're doing things like taking vitals and really caring for the patient, hands on, that is going to be patient care experience.

And post op, I would think that you're involved with making sure the patient's okay.

I don't know if you have to remove any lines or anything, but most likely I would think that's patient care experience.

Another question.

What about PT aid?

Would that be patient care?

Usually PT aid is considered patient care because you're involved in basically carrying out a physical therapist plan and so you're definitely involved with a patient.

You're helping them through exercises, you're counseling them, you're guiding them.

Most schools from what I've seen, are going to are going to consider that as patient care experience.