2.99. One hundredth of a point under the number everybody says is the cutoff.

Sarah Matthews applied with that GPA and got in. She's now practicing in OB-GYN and urogynecology.

I want to be careful here, because this is not me telling you GPA doesn't matter. It does, and a 2.99 makes everything harder. What Sarah's story shows is that programs read whole applications, and the rest of yours has to be strong enough to carry the number.

So we get into what she did - how she handled the GPA question head on, what she built around it, and how she chose where to apply. Being strategic about your program list matters enormously when you're below a threshold.

If you've been told a low GPA disqualifies you, this is the counterexample. Just don't mistake it for permission to stop working on your grades.

What we cover:

• Applying with a 2.99 CASPA GPA and what that felt like
• Building the rest of an application strong enough to carry it
• Addressing a low GPA without making excuses
• Choosing programs realistically
• Life as an OB-GYN and urogynecology PA
• What she'd tell someone sitting just under a cutoff

Resources:

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

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:

CapYear Training

Get $200 Off CapYear Academy Looking to boost your clinical experience this summer? CapYear Academy offers a flexible, 100% online medical assistant training program with optional externships and CCMA certification included. 🎓 Use code PA200 for $200 off your tuition! 👉 Enroll now at capyear.co

I know GPA can be a hot topic for PA school applications and I really like having guests who can share their story. So Sarah Matthews is joining us today to talk about her experience.

She recently graduated from PA School and is working in Ob GYN and urogynecology and she's talking about how she applied to PA school and was accepted with a 2.99 CASPA GPA and what that.

Process was like, how she did it all the tea.

We'll get into it. 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. Welcome to the Prepa Club Podcast. So, so happy to have you listening.

If you enjoy the podcast, I would love if you could leave a review to help other people find it. Let me know what episodes you want to hear more of, what we should talk about more. Always open to any ideas that you have for us.

I would love to hear from you. Can you believe that CASPA opens in three weeks?

Yikes. Wow.

Okay, so that it's pretty soon and we definitely need to start thinking about application stuff.

One thing to think about if you are trying to figure out how to make your application stand out, what you can add to it, to be competitive, to be a little more well rounded. All that fun stuff is an AAPA pre pa membership.

So AAPA has a pre pa option and AAPA is the overall organization for practicing PAs, but they have worked very hard to support pre pa students and there are a lot of, you know, they'll put on webinars, they do a bunch of stuff to help you guys out and you can sign up for that membership, you can put it on your application and that helps to show that you are already advocating for what you're going to do and that shows that you'll be an advocate later on. Is this a make it or break it for your application? Probably not.

Is it like a bonus? Like a little bit of extra thing,.

You know, bonus points? Yes, it is something that could set you apart from another applicant. So something to look into. They're having an in person event in Houston in May.

I wish I could be there, but it's unfortunately during our family beach vacation and I don't think my 5 year.

Old would like that. So if you check that out, let.

Me know how it is. And just know that you don't have to join, but it's just another option for you. So I just wanted to throw it out there.

So that you are aware of that.

All right. Today's episode is with Sarah Matthews, and she reached out and just wanted to share her experience.

And I think that is so meaningful to me when someone has listened to the podcast and used the PA platform and saw how helpful it was and heard other people's stories and wants to share their story as well. So she wanted to share. And she just finished PA school at Lincoln Memorial University.

We talk about that and her application process and how her GPA, when she applied, surprised her and was a 2.99, but she was still able to get accepted to PA school.

With these types of topics.

I feel like people will say, you shouldn't be talking about this. You shouldn't be encouraging this. And I'm not saying I'm encouraging you to apply with a low gpa, it will be more difficult.

Your application needs to be very well rounded. You need to have a lot of other strong things. With a lower gpa, you've got to show an upward trend. Show why that happened.

And Sarah talks about that in her interview. You'll hear.

But I also want you to know.

That I see applications every single year of people getting accepted to PA school with lower GPAs that are just meeting the minimums, barely meeting the minimums. And you, you do have to meet those numbers.

Absolutely.

You have to meet the minimums. That's not an option.

You got to do it. But.

I don't think you should completely hold back or not apply if GPA.

Is the only thing holding you back.

You can. I mean, there's a lot that goes into this.

There's a lot of gray area with.

School choice and making sure it's a.

Good fit there, all the other parts,.

The experience stuff on your application. But just listen to Sarah's story. I hope it's encouraging to you. I hope it gives you a little bit of hope and give us your feedback.

You can also watch all of these episodes on YouTube, so if you'd rather watch, that's an option, too. But I hope you enjoy hearing from Sarah. And if we can ever help you out at the PA platform, let me know.

You can use the Code Future PA on any of our services, like personal statement review, mock interviews, counseling, and then our books are all on Amazon now.

So that's the Pre PA workbook, the.

PA School Interview Guide, and the PA School Personal Statement Guide. And then there's tons of blogs and videos and podcasts and all this good stuff.

All right, all right.

I've been talking too long. Let's get To Sarah and I hope you enjoy.

I love just getting to share different stories and perspectives and I think it helps our pre PA and MPA student listeners to hear from people who they feel were similar to them but are where they want to be in the future. This will be really helpful for them to hear.

But yeah, we can jump in and.

You can give us a little intro, tell us who you are and then we'll go from there.

My name is Amanda Lark and I've been a PA for 21 years and the last 10 years I worked in dermatology and the rest of that time was emergency department. A little sprinkling of urgent care and wound care.

Nice.

I've been in Durham now for 10 years and that's all I've ever done. I'll be interested to hear how our roles are similar and different.

That's a great question. I always knew I wanted to work in the medical field and all I knew at the time was doctor, nurse.

We didn't really know much about the allied health professions and I went to a small liberal arts school, private college and I worked at a gym, I taught aerobics and I ran into a surgery scrub tech at the gym and he said, hey, I know a PA if you ever want to shadow him and I'll back it up. This was pre Internet. So in the dark ages there was this library called the health science library with file cabinets with professions on paper.

I rummaged through there, I found a few folks I wanted to shadow and came across this pa. I organized an independent study off campus. So my college has a class called January Term Jan Term.

I used one of the JAN terms for my profession to organize the independent study to shadow some PAs and encourage one abroad. And so I just used that time to really make sure this is what I wanted to do.

And I never actually made it around the corner to the other folks, but I shadowed cardiothoracic surgery, I shadowed internal medicine. I was able to see how PAs function in different roles and I just knew that that was what I wanted to do. I was hooked.

And actually my college at the time, it's a really big pre med institution.

I somehow come across this pre med committee that they conduct interviews and then they give recommendations for the pre med Students based on the interview and somehow stumbled across that and I asked them to interview me. I spent the whole time telling them about what I learned about the PA profession.

Now Austin College, where I went to school of starting a PA program and I'll bring it circle and be one of their instructional faculty members.

That's so cool. I love that you're able to have kind of some career development in your academics.

When you were deciding PA decided that's what you wanted to do, what did you choose as far as major? What kind of steps did you take to get towards that goal?

So I took a lot of the pre med classes, the prerequisite classes, and it was a basic liberal arts degree, so we had to know a little bit about everything. And I really believe in being well rounded anyway, so I just made sure I took all the prerequisite classes and I didn't get accepted the first time.

I didn't actually have all the prerequisites. I said, you know, I'm so excited, I want to apply. And here I am.

I worked as a nurse's aide, so at the time I was able to do that without a license and was able at least get some hands on patient care experience, which was helpful. I didn't get accepted the first time. By the time you find out you're not accepted, it's almost time to reapply. It's about that time.

So I went to respiratory therapy school.

They hire respiratory therapy students after the first semester to give breathing treatments and do oxygen checks and in hopes that that student will stay when they graduate. So I was able to work at Parkland in Dallas, the teaching hospital where Kennedy was taken when he was shot, and the teaching institution.

And that's where I ultimately ended up training at UT Southwestern. But I took the scenic route for sure.

That's great experience though.

I mean really, really great stuff that I feel like would only help you in PA school and then probably in more of like ER setting, maybe not so much in Durham. So when you were going through your application process, I know you said you didn't have all the prereqs done when you were choosing schools.

What were you looking for as far as PA programs?

They didn't have the CASPer. There was no central agency, so we had to apply individually to different programs. I applied to different programs.

The person I shadowed went to Emory. So I applied to Emory.

I applied to the Texas schools because I lived in Texas, but I was willing to relocate and I also wanted to train near a large institution. I thought I'm only doing this once. I want to go to the best school that I can. And I was willing to wait for it.

The second year I interviewed, and I was an alternate, but they don't tell you which alternate you are, and they are utilized. So I thought, well, at least I'm making some traction. And then the third time I got in, so there's some things I did along the way that was helpful.

I went to an information session at the program, ended up attending. They're always faculty members there. They have this PowerPoint presentation. I don't know if they still do it.

Whoever I saw that day was actually in my interview. And I had a physical therapist I worked with who arranged these businessmen to conduct a mock interview for me.

And they didn't know anything about the medical field, but at least they could give me some feedback on interview style and some tips. But just anything you can get your hands on while you're waiting is so helpful.

How did you stay encouraged or excited about the process? That's something I've found with reapplying, is that it can just feel like, oh, man. Like, am I ever gonna get there and.

And get a little disheartening? So did you ever feel that, or were you just like, no, I know this is what I want to do. I'm just gonna keep working on it until I get there?

Absolutely.

It's really easy to feel discouraged, especially if you know people who are getting accepted and you're like, they were stacking groceries while I'm working in a hospital. And the comparison game just doesn't boost morale. I just tried to stay laser focused on my goal and reverse engineer it.

This is where I want to be, and I'm doing everything I can to get there, and I just have to stay in that lane and not worry about what everybody else is doing. But I can say, looking back and once I got accepted, that it's not failure. It's just a temporary setback. It's not a permanent failure.

All of those things that you do along the way, it's not wasted. It all matters.

And it actually made PA school so much easier and put me in a much more competitive position for jobs and awards at school and definitely pay dividends. Making the most of that time, it was definitely disheartening at times.

That's a good perspective. It is hard when you're in it and it feels so long. Like a year or six months or whatever. It feels like an eternity.

But then in the grand scheme of things, when you look back, you're like, oh, that was such a small, small time and such a small part of my life. But while you're going through it, it's hard to have that until it's over.

I feel like as I've gotten older, that's just how a lot of life is, not just PA school. So it was a good learning experience, but it never really ends after PA school either.

Have to have some joy along the way. It can't be, oh, when I get into school, my life is complete because you have to enjoy a little bit of life along the way.

And so once I got into PA school, I ran a marathon in PA school. Most of my first pregnancy was in PA school.

Okay.

Life kept going.

Oh, I want to hear about that. So, okay, so you got in, got to PA school. Was it what you expected or easier, harder?

It was definitely rigorous. It was what I expected it to be. Just like anything in life, you have to have really good boundaries.

The people in your life are not going to understand it unless they're going through it with you. I just knew, like Hamilton, I'm not going to waste my shot. This is my shot. I had a lot to prove to myself. It took me this long.

I'm not messing this up. This is my priority. And you have to be creative with your studying. I wrote the public bus downtown.

I did the park and ride and studied on the way to school, studied on the way back to keep the notes fresh. You just have to be very creative to make it all happen.

It's such a different time because it's so much information all at once. And it's just a whirlwind where you're trying to stay caught up, but you really can't get ahead at any point. You're just staying with the flow.

You mentioned having a pregnancy during PA school, which, interestingly enough, no one in my class got pregnant or had babies during PA school. That was odd. The class before me had some pregnancies. The class after me did. How was that? I'm assuming I was on rotations.

It was during the rotation year. So I was in PA school on rotations during 9 11. I was out of town at my internal medicine rotation, and I was training for the marathon.

I ran the marathon in December, and then I just got the baby bug. All of a sudden, the baby bug hit me and I did the whole calculation of, okay, when am I going to be out of school?

Because I didn't want to start a job and go, oh, hey, I need to take off, and there's no Perfect time, right? So it worked out where most of my call rotations were already completed when I got pregnant. So it was just as if I was at a 9 to 5 job.

And I graduated August of that year, took the certification exam in September. I had him in October. So he's 21 now, in college.

And I interviewed for my job in the ER when he was two weeks old and then started working after New year. So I built him my own little maternity leave. But new mom, new pa, it was a challenge. It was sink or swim. I just knew I had to do it.

And I knew if I got into PA school, I could run a marathon. If I can get into PA school and run a marathon, I can work at my job.

You know, all of this success builds and gives you that confidence, and you just have to take it one thing at a time.

No, I love that. That's awesome. A girl at the class before me, she didn't plan hers quite as well.

She finished rotations, graduated, took boards, and had her baby the next day. Just in time. Just barely made it there. No, that's awesome.

And I think that's good for people to hear because a lot of people feel like they have to put their life completely on hold to become a pa. You said something else about just making choices about your boundaries and decisions you make. And I. I feel very strongly the same way that life has to go on.

I planned a wedding and got married during PA school, which people thought I was insane. They're like, what are you doing? Like, you're not supposed to do that. They told you not to do that.

Which was true, but I was like, I don't want to wait two more years. Life has to go on. Is your son interested in medicine at all?

No, not at all.

No.

I have a daughter in college as well, and she's in nursing school. She's the one with the medical bug.

Interesting. That's. I have two kids, five and seven, almost eight months. And I'm.

I'm wondering right now, my five year old does say she wants to be a pa, but I think she just doesn't know anything else. I'm interested to see where they end up in the future. So going into your first job, did you want to go into er?

Is that what you were thinking or how did that come to be?

Surgery was always a love of mine because I'd shadowed the cardiothoracic surgery pa and because it took a couple of years to get accepted. Accepted. I decided to just go into the emergency department. That was kind of my exit strategy from surgery when I made my grand plan.

So I just jumped into the ER and I learned a lot.

So for the the pants exam and recertification, you have a lot of experience to pull from and in the material and a lot of experience that can lead you anywhere if you want to change specialties.

And I was able to work a lot of random shifts and then have a lot of time at home and hang out with mom friends who are at home and do things that stay at home moms do. So I felt like at the time I was able to have the best of everything. But the schedule is the best and worst part of the emergency room.

You have to fake your kids out and have Christmas on a different day. And then once they start school, they know and so it becomes a little bit more challenging.

I enjoyed the ER too. I just can't do broken bones. They freaked me out. And so my ER was like, this is not for you. He was like, you need to do something else.

You said you did urgent care too. Is that at the same time or.

I was transitioning out of full time er.

The company I worked for had started in urgent care, so I was able to kind of transition into the urgent care, but I still would pop in and work some shifts in the er.

Nice. What was the most fun, the best part about working in er Urgent care?

There's definitely a lot of energy and you see such a variety. See, you just don't know what you're going to get.

And you can hop in a room and there's a kidney stone and in the next room there's a heart attack and in the next room you're suturing. And I did enjoy the people that I worked with. You really bond with those stressful times.

And I like doing all the procedures and that's what ended up leading me to dermatology, ultimately. The procedures.

Yeah, it's a good mix there when you can have a little bit better schedule too.

Right.

I'm sure you get questions all the time because I know I do. Of like, how'd you get into derm? How'd you find it? How did you do it? What was your like? How'd you do it?

I feel like there's a lot of gatekeeping in Durham because it's so competitive. I have a lot of takeaways, but one of those, just be open.

I had a friend out of state and I don't know if she's still doing this, but Mary Monroe is the former wife of Joe Monroe, who started the sdpa.

Oh, cool.

I had a friend who said she likes to be a matchmaker. And so she has this mini resume. You fill it out and she'll give you a list of jobs available. And this is her hobby.

Again, I don't know if she's still doing it. And she gave me a list, and I knew some of those positions were filled, but it gave me a base. It gave me a list of people to contact.

So I contacted everybody on the list, and there was some plastics overlap.

So I would say for people who are interested in derm and maybe can't get in, plastics has a little bit of overlap as well, so that might be worthwhile to pursue. Or mohs. So I contacted everybody, and actually my supervising physician now is one of the contacts.

But at the time, I didn't have the derm experience, so I went to conferences, and I had my third child at the time. And on my days off, I would pay a babysitter and go shadow people. And I ended up applying for MA jobs on Craigslist.

I was like, I need to think outside the box here and get creative because I need to pay for my babysitter. I need to develop some real connections, so I just need to think outside the box a little bit. And somebody responded to it, and I said, I'm a pa.

Here's what I really want to do, but I'll take anything.

And actually, somebody was pregnant and said, hey, if you train, you can be her maternity leave, and then you can shop around with a little bit of experience. We may not have anything on the other side of it, but at least you'll have some kind of experience to go from.

And this physician had two offices, and once the PA came back from maternity leave, the other PA said, don't go anywhere. I'm pregnant now. So I ended up backfilling her spot.

She ended up staying home for a little while, and eventually I left when the practice sold and she backfilled me again. So it worked out for everybody. You just have to be creative and be willing to do anything. If it is something you want to do, don't go. I'm a pa.

I don't want to be an ma. I would have worked at the front. I would have done anything to develop the contacts because I wanted it badly enough.

Yeah, I feel like you have probably seen two people be like, don't take that salary. Don't do training, don't sacrifice. That looks bad for all of us. But I agree.

I think to get your foot into derm, sometimes it does take being creative or being open. Are you still at your first job?

No. Okay. Yeah.

My first job was I was a new grad and my surgery preceptor knew the dermatologist and had actually gotten the first PA that they hired her job there and she was moving. And he said, I think you're going to be a great fit. Let me put in a recommendation.

And so I went over an interview and all that, and the salary they offered was pretty low, I'll say it, because I don't really care at this point, but it was $60,000 base salary. And they're like, you're probably not going to get any commission or bonus your first year, at least.

But after that, there was a commission kind of structure in place, and two other PAs in town had turned it down, and they were already practicing. One was in urgent care and one was in nephrology, and they had turned it down because of the salary. And I was like, I'm a new grad.

I don't know anything. They're going to have to train me. And I was kind of thinking in the long term.

And I was like, if I can get there and I can prove that I'm a hard worker, I'm ready to learn. I see great earning potential. Like, I can eventually do better, whatever, in the long run.

My first year, the doctor that hired me went out on maternity leave, so I had to cover for her. So I've seen a ton of patients, and then we ended up partnering with another practice and that other physician went out on maternity leave.

Both of them took like four and a half months, by the way. And I covered for her, too. And so I did end up bonusing my first year because I was having to see a bunch of patients.

It was like, jump in the deep end kind of thing. It worked out fantastically, but I guess I kind of took a chance.

And a lot of people would have said no just based on the base salary, but I wanted to do it. I wanted to do the procedures, I wanted to learn. I wanted to be in derm. It felt worth it to me.

I think that's good perspective to have for anyone thinking they want to get into a specialty and just. It may not happen right away. It may be something that you are working towards for a while.

One of the physicians that was on that initial list is the physician I work for now. I would.

I would stay in touch with him and I would say, okay, I went to this conference and now I have this experience, experience with this job and our Timing wasn't favorable. And then finally the stars aligned. And I've been there almost five and a half years.

Okay, cool. So I ended up switching because after I had my daughter, I wanted to go part time. And the practice I was at originally, they weren't down for that.

So I like just want to prioritize family, but I don't want to stop being a derm pa. And I found a place that lets me work two days a week. Now I work Mondays and Tuesdays, so that's a good, good balance. But having that experience made it so much easier to find another job.

And I'm in a smaller town, so experienced PAs are not that common. And so it was very easy for me to make the switch.

The tip that I always tell people, especially on rotations if you are in school, is talk to the drug reps. I feel like they know a lot of open positions and because they work all over and have these huge networks, a lot of times they can find people.

I had a friend who I helped her get a job in Houston, even though I'm in Georgia, just knowing reps. And then she moved to Charleston, was able to get a job there through drug reps also. So what does your schedule look like as far as working now?

I work Monday through Friday. I have a shorter day on Friday, and I see patients either 8 to 5 or 8:30 to 5:30.

And then I do the charting at night and I try to do the charting during lunch.

So I have to have really good boundaries about lunch is my headphone time where I needed to grind and get some of those things done to minimize the work at home. And we also work one Saturday a month for a half day. And I just call it a princess shift because it's better than the er.

But for dermatology you have to have a clientele and so you have to be available when they can come in. You may have that patient that's only off on Tuesday, and if you're not there, then they're going to see someone else.

So I would encourage anybody building up to try to work, work a lot just to develop that patient base. You can always scale back later. But I work a lot and I'm just in a place that's unfortunate that it's busy.

Every derm job I've come across was relieving someone from maternity leave. It just happened to work out that way. But this is a busy area. Even within the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex, all the clinics are different.

The things that I saw are different. And the Level of busy is different and the culture is different. So even within one area, there's a lot of variability.

On a full workday, typically, how many.

Patients are you seeing in the 30s?

I feel like that blows people's mind whenever they ask, like, how many patients do you see a day?

Or they hear, how many we see in Durham, I feel like I usually start with about 35 on my schedule and then between no shows or cancellations, ends up a little bit lower. Or some days the opposite. And people are calling and they have to add, what is your mix as far as are you medical, surgical, cosmetic?

At this office, it's medical and surgical.

I have done cosmetics, and at this office, I work for a physician who has several locations, and they have a plastic surgeon, they have mohs, they have nurse injectors, and they have a whole cosmetics side next door. So I just do the medical dermatology, which is great. It works out perfectly.

And I actually met the nurse injector at a cosmetics conference a long time ago, so we already had a rapport. I'm okay with that right now.

At first, I didn't want to lose those skills, but we're so busy, and if you're not doing cosmetics pretty regularly, I just wouldn't feel comfortable doing it all of the time if I didn't do it enough to keep those skills. I mean, Botox is easy, but filler, some of those other techniques and modalities, I definitely wouldn't want to just do it sparingly.

Yeah, I agree. I'm mainly medical with surgical than cosmetic the least at this office.

And it's a lot of Botox and a few of my filler patients who I've just had over the years. The physician does a lot more of our injectables in this office.

As far as your scope, your level of autonomy, how independently are you practicing, how accessible are the physicians there?

There's always a physician with me and sometimes more than one physician and other PAs. So I feel like I always have somebody. If I need access to someone to ask a question, I don't.

I have autonomy in terms of what kind of medicines I can use for acne or for whatever condition I'm seeing. I'm not micromanaged that way, so I have the flexibility as long as it's appropriate, of course.

But I do always have someone available, and my physician travels among his other locations, so he's with me one day a week.

As far as surgeries or surgical procedures, are you doing excisions? What is your surgical side look like.

Excisions and punch excisions. And if there's something that I don't want to do or don't feel comfortable doing, then I let someone else do it.

Same. Yeah. So we're very similar. Do you take any call? That's another question that comes up a lot.

Not necessarily call. There is an after hours line where calls can get forwarded to me. So I have had maybe two or three calls, maybe a call a year. Talk. Yes.

We don't get a lot.

It's. It's very, very rare. So I know sometimes people worry about that. I haven't had an issue with that.

Yeah, I haven't either. We also have an after hours line and the medical assistants take the calls we don't get a lot.

And then if they ever have a question, they send it to us. We talk about work life balance, which is such a catchphrase. Hot Topic.

But I do feel like derm has probably as close as you can get to a good work life balance in, in my opinion. Have you felt like it's a good choice from a family perspective? It works or does. Do you ever think about maybe doing something else?

Like for somebody, maybe trying to decide, oh, would I go something like ER, shift work or should I look for something more clinic work?

I don't think anything's perfect. It just depends on what's most important to you.

Because dermatology, I work more days than I did before, but I have a regular sleep cycle and don't miss the holidays with my family. So there's always a trade off. You can always change it up. So there are PAs in Durham who work as medical science liaisons.

They branch off and they teach, they do other things. And so it's nothing's permanent. Right. If what's the worst thing that can happen? You try it and you figure out, hey, maybe this is too much for me.

Go part time or job share. What's tricky about dermatology is they have to hire a staff to work with you.

So if you're part time, the people who are hired to work with you need to be part time or somebody else has to be the full time equivalent on the other side of it. So I understand that perspective as well, but nothing's permanent.

I would just tell anybody to do what you love and then if it doesn't work, massage your plan and figure out something that's going to give you that balance that you need.

Yeah, I agree. That was my big thing was prioritizing family and my husband has a weird Schedule where he's seven on, seven off.

So if I'm working a five day work week, we really only would see each other every other weekend. And that just didn't really make sense. I was very lucky.

Where the physician I worked for, she basically said, you make your schedule and we'll make it work. And she works an interesting schedule. She takes off every other Wednesday and every other Friday.

That's just how she prefers to work and does best and gets to do things with her kids and wants to make sure we can do things with our kids. If you want a specific job or setup or something, it's out there. You may sacrifice something.

It may be specialty, it may be location, but there's just so many options as a pa, which is really cool. How do you feel like the profession has changed since you started?

There's definitely more private equity, more acquisition.

Yeah.

Business folks come in and buy the practice. That's happened to me twice and it does change the culture a little bit. So I'm fortunate.

I'm in a place right now with a privately owned physician group and I'll ride that wave as long as I can.

I don't have any reason right now to do anything different, but I've definitely seen those changes because there's some physicians who probably benefit from that because they don't have to run the office. I can understand that.

On the flip side though, they can make other decisions about your down to the band aids, what you're able to use in your schedule, and it definitely changes the landscape. That's the main change that I've seen in my area. There's a lot of growth in our area, so more offices pop up and then it dilutes the clientele.

So for folks who want to stay busy, just really depends on where you work. There's a lot of saturation in some areas, whereas other areas are wide open.

We're just now starting to see both of those things a little bit more.

It was kind of like all of the dermatologists when I first started retired all at once and there weren't many offices and now it's building back up with some new ones. And then we just had our first private equity people come in and buy two offices.

It's interesting seeing the shifts there and how that works and how it affects everybody. Thank you so much for sharing with everyone and your insight to our great gym.

Is there anything you just love about being a PA or on the flip side that you feel like people should know before they choose the profession?

I think you just really need to take an inventory of who you are, what you want. Nothing is perfect. They're going to be pros and cons. Most of the time it doesn't bother me. But you have to do more with less.

Don't go into it asking for respect and the accolades like a physician. You have to do it because you really love it and find the specialty that works for you.

And it may take a little trial and error, and that's okay because you're learning. I really remember what that felt like. And just remember that it's. It's not a no, it's a not right now. If it doesn't work out right away.

Those are great tips. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me. It.