The rules that shape how PAs practice don't write themselves. Somebody shows up and works on them.

Jonathan Baker came on to talk about advocacy - what it means, where it happens, and how to get involved. Most of the real action is at the state level, through your state PA society, because that's where scope of practice and licensing rules get decided. AAPA handles the national picture.

If you're a student, this is more accessible than you think. Student societies exist at almost every program, and showing up early is how people end up leading things later.

And for what it's worth, knowing what's happening in the profession is a genuinely good look in an interview. Programs like applicants who care about the field, not just the job.

What we talk about:

• What PA advocacy actually involves
• State societies and why they matter most
• Getting involved with AAPA
• Opportunities for students to participate
• Building leadership skills through professional groups
• Staying current on issues facing the profession

Resources:

PA School Interview Guide: https://www.thepaplatform.com/physician-assistant-school-interview-guide

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

Mentioned in this episode:

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A question I get a lot is how to get involved with supporting the PA profession.

Well, today I'm introducing you to Jonathan, who is going to tell us all about that in one of my very favorite interviews.

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, thanks for jumping on and listening to the podcast.

This episode I am so excited about, so.

And I actually have a voicemail question that I'm gonna play for you in a minute, which is relevant and part of why we did this episode, besides the fact that I love connecting with people.

I'm Savannah, by the way.

I am a dermatology PA and I also run a website called the PA Platform, which I'd love for you to check out if you're interested.

And we have a lot of stuff over there.

We're kind of working on revamping some things, so if there's something you want to see, please let me know.

But also check out our free downloads, check out all of our blog posts.

We have so many podcast episodes and videos now.

There is a lot of information to help you out, but if you ever can't find anything, feel free to send me a message.

But today, once I shared this voicemail question with you and then this interview, I just think you're going to want to go out and start telling everybody about the PA profession.

So, you know, it's very difficult, I think at a pre PA level, PA student level, and even as a PA to find the time and also just the logistics of getting involved with either your state societies or the aapa.

There's just a lot of steps there.

And so I connected on Instagram with Jonathan.

He's erectal rockstar.

And once you hear his story and about his job, you kind of understand what that means.

But he is awesome, so I think you're really going to enjoy this.

He also had a really interesting path to becoming a PA that wasn't what I would call traditional.

So we'll jump into that in just a second.

I did want to mention our sponsors, which are my PA resource that is a personal statement editing service specific specifically for PA school.

You can use the code futurepa there for a discount.

And now is the time to kind of start thinking about your essay if you're going to be applying next cycle.

So go ahead and get on that.

Go check it out.

They have a free workshop.

And also check out paschoolprep.com.

And this is a little different.

This is kind of at the other end of the spectrum when you have been accepted and you need a refresher on your anatomy, physiology, med terms just to make sure that you know everything you need to know going in to PA school.

So you can also use the code future PA there.

And don't forget, you can use it on the PA platform for the PA school interview guide, the course, mock interviews, whatever you need help with.

If you do need more help than what we just offer in our information.

So okay, we will jump in to this amazing interview.

Here we go.

So once we get into PA school and we become PA students and then we start practicing out as PAs in the field, my question is how you recommend or if you have been involved in advocacy with the profession, how to do that, how to get involved?

What are the best ways to stay updated on the latest PA news and what's happening in the profession and what do you think makes a PA leader and what can we do as students to prepare ourselves to be better leaders in the field field and better advocates for our profession?

I'm Jonathan Baker, the rightful rock star on Instagram.

I've been a PA for 10 years now.

I went to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and I was very, very lucky to know that I wanted to be a PA at a young age.

And I knew I wanted to be in medicine.

I thought I wanted to be a surgeon, but I always was a team player.

I always wanted.

I never felt the need to be the leader, to have a big name or to be famous.

I never had that sort of pressure.

And so when I learned about PA and the flexibility and the thought of not training for the next 12 years, it was an absolute no brainer for me.

And so I found a three plus two program at Duquesne and went there for five years and graduated at the age of 22 or 23, practicing medicine, which seemed legit because I knew what I was doing and I did well in school and I felt good about it.

But it was really kind of bizarre when I look back, like, what were people thinking when this like 22 year old was walking in there?

I'm like, okay, I'm gonna take biopsies or prescribe your medication or whatever.

But I don't really remember it being a difficult situation.

I mean, I think it's about how you present yourself because I still get those that are like, how old are you?

You don't look old enough to be doing this.

So how long have you been a.

PA now the 10 years.

Awesome.

Okay, so Duquesne, is that the one that I probably call, like, Dusk Queens?

Yes, exactly.

Great.

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

You queues me.

Okay, so now I know how to say that.

Great.

So that's interesting that you knew.

So, I mean, 10 years ago, I was in undergrad, and I, like, only barely kind of knew what a PA was.

How did you.

What.

How are you exposed to it?

Is it something you found on your own?

Like, what made you have that interest and how did you find it?

My mom was an rn actually for a very short time, and she sort of pushed it pretty quickly when she.

When she.

I think that was her first exposure to a pa, but she was like, there's this other profession you really should think about.

And it just clicked.

It just fit all the boxes of everything I wanted and none of the stuff I didn't need.

And I'm so happy with the decision.

I have never looked back, not once.

Okay, that's awesome.

So I just did an interview with another PA who I met on Instagram, which is how we met.

And she was funny because she went to PA school when she was a little bit older, like in her 30s, and it was a feeder program with a three plus two.

And she said those students, like, kicked everyone's butts and did the best out of everyone.

So maybe there's something to be said for that.

I don't know.

Yeah, I always felt bad for the people who came in through that route because we were like.

We were probably clique ish.

But I was in college, so I don't realize that.

Right.

But, like, you know, it had to be weird to come into a class and we had a smaller class.

I think we had, like 30 or 40 people.

I think classes now are huge, but I think, like, coming into the atmosphere, these people who've been together now for three years, and then all of a sudden, you're the new person.

I think is kind of a strange setting, but, you know, it's so.

It's such a traumatic experience to go through PA school that, like, I think you're going to get close to people you're with no matter what happens.

I agree.

Okay, so what?

So you've been a PA for 10.

What has your career looked like as a PA?

So I only ever had two jobs.

I was really, really lucky in my initial job search, and the job I ended up finding was one of my friends who was a bartender, waited on someone who worked for a clinic that did HIV research.

And there's a whole series of different weird things that happened.

And then I ended up meeting a physician who worked in anorectal health with a focus on gay men and sexual and gender minorities and ended up working for him in my first job.

And he was a wonderful, wonderful mentor.

And initially, I'll come back to this.

Initially it was very much the sort of supervisory relationship.

And then by the end of it was very much collaborative, which was a cool transition to go through.

But I think it's so important, you know, everyone thinks about what a job search might look like.

And this was truly a, like a bar thing that happened.

And that's, that's where it landed.

It ended up being like my dream job.

It was part clinic, part research, but all in the same kind of area, all surrounding sexual health and anal rectal health.

And so I did that for five years and then my partner wanted to move to New York and I love New York.

And this was sort of another physician I had met at a conference years and years ago and made that connection and never had any intention of working with him.

And as my partner wanted to move, I gave him a call.

His.

His nurse practitioner was leaving and it was just like a perfect fit.

So I was very fortunate with both job searches of really not having to search.

But I do think most PAs I know really found their jobs through personal connections rather than searching for them in any traditional way.

Not that that's not important, but I think it's really common to kind of have a personal connection that these jobs.

Oh yeah, definitely.

I mean, use your connections.

My job, the way I found them looks very similar.

So one thing you mentioned that's interesting is something I questions about.

So you worked partly doing research.

So people ask me, can PAs do research?

And my answer is always like eh, not like they can, but it's not that common.

But obviously they can.

Yeah, it's a part of my job that's interesting that I don't talk a lot about and I don't know why because I really love it.

So we do very much clinical research.

So this is seeing patients and they're actually just seamlessly placed on my schedule because it's really, really clinical.

We're doing visits.

The only difference is I have a protocol that I have to have in the back of my head and adhere to is take certain samples that maybe clinically I wouldn't want to take, but for the sake of the research study I need to.

But it's really interesting because you get to be involved in advancing medicine and in Doing that.

It also means that you have to really understand where you're coming from and understand why are we doing these tests to start with and then why would we expand that through this research study?

So it's very, very clinical.

I'm not in a lab, I'm not pipetting anything at all.

Ahep research assistants who might have things.

I'm not sitting typing or writing papers.

It's releasing patients and then if I choose to write a paper out of that, that's sort of my prerogative.

But the day to day research of a PA can be super clinical and like I said, just seamlessly placed on my schedule because they're really treated almost the exact same as just any clinical patient.

Okay, so what is your, like, what does a day at your job look like?

Or just kind of your schedule?

What do you do?

It's unfortunately 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, which is a really wonderful thing.

Although at times, you know, having a Tuesday off sounds so wonderful, but working Saturday night at midnight also doesn't sound like.

So I'll take it.

So we see, we do a lot of procedures in my practice and so we see patients every half hour, which is a really luxurious setting I can imagine in Durham.

You're like every four and a half.

Minutes, 10 minutes with some double booked.

Yeah, yeah.

So because we do so many procedures and biopsies and we do anoscopy on almost every patient that we see.

So it really takes a lot more time.

So you do have half an hour per patient.

Probably about two thirds of my patients are insured patients who I see typically like routine visits.

We do like an annual visit that would be very similar to what might happen at a gynecologist's office.

But dealing with anal rectal sexual health and doing anal paps instead of cervical paps and then I have a handful of sort of pre op and post op patients.

We do surgery in the office and this is for things like hemorrhoids or warts, fissures, fistulas.

And then one third is probably these research patients and we do HPV related research.

But again they just kind of fall in the mix.

And then I have two half days of administration a week, which is another very luxurious thing to have as a pa.

But we actually, we don't have a nurse in our practice at all, which can be difficult because there's certain nursing responsibilities that a medical assistant really can't do.

And so it sort of ends up on my plate.

But I'm not trained as a nurse and so I've kind of learned those types of responsibilities on the job.

I take care of most of the phone calls and prescription refills.

And so those two half administrative days are absolutely essential to my sanity.

Okay, do you want to touch a little bit on how you interact with your supervising physician?

Yeah, not much at all.

I am a big proponent of the term collaborating.

My setting is a little bit unique because my main collaborating physician is also my employer.

And so as much as I want to have a very collaborative relationship, there is some sort of supervisory role because it's his practice.

But in terms of day to day, I mean, there's honestly some days where we.

I actually don't even think I said hi to him today because we're just.

We're independently seeing our patients and just never even crossed paths.

I probably ask for either of their opinions maybe once a week, and they probably ask my opinion once every other week.

But it's also, I always have loved that sort of backup of like knowing I have someone else on my team available to me if I.

If I don't know what something is.

We each sort of have our own specialty.

If I know someone's going to end up in hemorrhoid surgery, a lot of times I'll bring in the collaborating physician who's going to operate on them, whereas he might bring me in.

When there's a patient with a sexual health concern that's sort of a little bit outside of his normal ballpark.

How different is that from your first job?

So my first job was a lot more supervisory at the beginning, which is really important for PAs.

You know, I never learned almost any of the skills I'm using now.

I learned how to learn medicine in PA school, and then as a PA actually learned what I was doing.

And so I am.

But I'm on a call.

Yep, it was our first interaction today.

Where was I at?

Oh, so, you know, I learned everything from him.

And it was what I was doing clinically, it was how to be part of clinical research, because I really, you know, learned very little about that, like OP values.

And that was about the extent of my clinical research knowledge.

So it was a lot of learning.

And then by the time that I had left there, you know, he was starting up a study and came to me and said, what do you think about the study?

And what would you add to it?

What wouldn't you include?

And so it sort of transitioned from being that supervisory to very collaborative.

We did.

We practiced at the same time.

We saw patients in rooms next to each other.

So we would see each other every day, and I would say hi every day.

Okay, so you have an interesting job and an interesting background.

And then when we are emailing back and forth, you have, like, a whole list of things under your name that you're involved with.

Can you give us that list and how you ended up in these roles?

Absolutely.

My plate is very, very full right now, and I'm sort of at a point in my career where I need to start thinking about what do I need to focus on, because I'm stretching myself too thin.

But I really can't let go of anything either.

So I went to a. I never was involved in leadership in PA school.

I did not a single thing.

I wasn't even a member of my state society.

I might have been an AAP member because they told us to, but, like, I don't really understand what the purpose of AAPA was.

And I think a lot of students are in that boat where you're so focused on that fire hose of information that you just don't even have time to think about professionalism or leadership.

And so I started going to AAPA because my friends went.

And so we would go and have fun and go to, you know, go to lectures during the day and kind of do our own thing at night.

And eventually came across the LBGTPA caucus.

And I'm openly gay.

My patients are predominantly gay and other sexual and gender minorities.

So that was a pretty obvious fit for me.

And so I just started kind of attending their events, and they always had a cash bar and they would have, like, comedian and all this fun stuff.

And I was like, wow, what a cool group of people, like these other PAs like me, who really like having fun.

And so that was actually, like, what somehow transitioned into my leadership was it was just wanting to go to this conference and have fun, but then starting to realize how important this organization actually was.

And so I was asked to consider a board position with them.

They're a small organization.

I had some leadership experience from different, like, organizations in college, but nothing really of that caliber.

And so I was the treasurer for the first year, which, if you saw my bank account, I don't know how that was a good option.

I would never pick that role.

But, like, what PA is going to be a good treasurer?

I don't know.

So that was fine.

And.

I really grew to like these people a lot and realized we had the same ideology and wanting to really just advance healthcare equality, both for sort of LGBT populations, but just across the board.

And this sort of, like, Global sense of equality of racial and ethnic minorities and gender differences and sort of global health to some extent.

And so I really shared the ideology with them.

And there's this powerhouse of people doing policy work with an apa.

And so that was really like my entry into leadership.

I eventually became president of the organization and due to a couple circumstances, ended up being president a lot longer than I should have.

What, what was it?

Of the caucus?

Yeah, of the caucus.

Okay.

I was like, aapa,.

I have not been AAPA president yet.

Yet.

And so as president, I had no choice but to like start to understand this policy stuff.

And so there's this whole organization within the APA called the House of Delegates, as you probably know, who are all elected from the 50 states, from the different specialty organizations and then from these sort of special interest organizations, organizations like the LBGTPA caucus.

And so the prior to me getting involved in the policy, they had sort of redefined what family meant within APA policy.

So that this concept of family wasn't necessarily biological family, which again, thinking that global health equality isn't unique to an LGBT population, there's lots of people whose biological family isn't really what they would consider their family.

And that extended into sort of the policies on adoption and some other things.

And then my time in the board, I really avoided policy, but it eventually became something that I had to get involved with.

And so I went to this three day meeting of the HOD and sort of everyone else did the work for me to write the policy we were presenting.

And I got up to the microphone and I like, I love public speaking.

I speak at AAPA every year.

And I was quivering like, these are the leaders of my profession and I'm going to stand here in front of them and give them what we think this policy should be.

And they might absolutely rip it apart.

And it was a policy about conversion therapy, which should be a no brainer.

And it was, you know, there was almost no opposition to our policy.

And the president of the APA at that time got down off the podium, came to a microphone and said, I don't, I can't even believe we're debating this right now.

There's no debate here.

This is a policy we absolutely need to adopt.

And so it was, it was like the sense of power and the sense of acceptance and, and really that, that sort of community I felt within the caucus, I was like starting to feel within aapa.

And at the same time, AAPA was sort of challenging NCCPA on the recertification exam and what was the other thing they were doing?

I just realized, like, AAPA is so powerful and they, and they genuinely care.

They really care about, about the future of our profession.

And they're the only group that has the power to make that difference.

And so I just really, at that point, like, fell in love with AAPA and this PA leadership and why that's so important.

Okay, so maybe you can clarify this.

So, like a policy that the AAPA says, is that basically just like, I don't know how to say it, like a statement of belief, like, it's not a law, it's just kind of like, as a group, this is what we think.

Yeah.

So there's, there's a lot of different types of policy.

And I don't know that I'm going to articulate this.

Great.

But there's sort of policies that are like APA policy.

Like the president is elected in this manner.

And so that's like, there's lots of policies like that, like how do, how do we run things, how do we, how do we operate day to day?

Which is really great because you don't have a board of 20 people making those decisions.

You actually have 300 people representing the entire profession making those decisions.

And then there's more sort of statements of belief.

And that's, and that's really where the, where the caucus's policy excelled.

And so to give you an example of how that plays out, one of the other policies that we passed was changing the discrimination policy.

And so it used to be a PA opposes discrimination against gender, sexuality, this, that, and the other thing.

And it's like this big, long laundry list.

And so we just clean it up and we just change it to APA opposes, discriminate, end of story.

And so when it came to some of these Supreme Court briefs that are happening right now, where the Supreme Court's looking at, can we discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender identity, the AAPA actually has a policy to support signing on to those.

And so the APA will often sign on to something from AMA that's.

Here are all the medical reasons why discrimination is bad.

And we know that people like me, who are white, well off gay men, we do really well in life.

But if you combine that with an ethnic minority, with someone whose family didn't support them, who have been abused in any way, we do a lot worse.

And so by institutionalizing discrimination, you actually severely affect health outcomes.

And then we see increased rates of depression and anxiety, but even cardiovascular disease, smoking, homelessness, all of these issues that just stem simply from discrimination.

And so because the AAPA HOD has existing policy opposing discrimination, then AAPA can actually sign on to sort of brief that goes to the Supreme Court to explain why discrimination is bad from a medical standpoint.

Did that make sense?

Kind of, yeah.

It's like we can, like, use our statements to, like, piggyback to actually make changes.

Exactly.

Even though it's not like a law, like, it's not something that you necessarily enforce or like, I mean, kind of the same as otp.

Like, it has to get past each state for it to.

To have any real meaning or leverage.

Right, right.

And, you know, the rule is just within apa.

And so if, you know, if there's a PA out there who's working on conversion therapy and trying to turn gay people straight, for example, they actually would not be able to be a member of AAPA because they oppose the policy of the aapa.

And that would.

I mean, that's.

It's more complicated than that, but that's sort of where it becomes like a law.

But they're not, like, they're not going to lose their license because, I mean, they might, depending on state law, but the AAP would just, you know, dictate that type of thing.

What other caucuses are there?

I think I've heard there's like a military one.

There are so many.

Oh, there are many.

So there's 50 state organizations, and then there's, I don't know, maybe 25 specialty organizations.

So, like urology, gynecology, all of those.

And then you have all of the military branches, which I couldn't list out, but there's maybe 10 different military organizations that are constituents of AAPA.

And then there's some of the groups we've worked with.

There's a Latinos with PA Health, the African American Heritage Caucus.

What else?

There's an HIV group.

There's PAs for global health.

And so wherever there's a group of enough PAs and NFPAs who want to lead something, then they can get a charter to become a constituent organization of aapa.

And if you meet certain criteria, then you actually get a vote in the House of Delegates and opportunity to make policy interesting.

Okay, awesome.

So how has that transitioned from getting involved on a national level to being involved in your state level?

Yeah, so this is something I'm becoming more and more passionate about because I saw APA and again, challenging nccpa and I'm like, wow, this is so great.

And I got involved in the House of Delegates, and they have a Great.

A great meeting every year called the Leadership and Advocacy Summit where you learn all about this stuff and they prepare you to be a leader.

And an OTP is coming up.

And I'm like, wow, this is awesome.

This is going to improve our practice ability.

And it comes down to that.

OTP is a state level thing.

And so now that charge of AAPA is no longer a national thing, it's really state by state.

And so it sort of seems like a step back to go from like heavily involved with the national thing to the state thing, but it really supports the national thing to work at a state level.

And so my mentor, we have a very informal mentorship, but she just suggested that everyone for the New York State Society pas.

And there was an opening or divided into districts, there was an opening for the New York City district where I live.

And so I put my name in and I ended up being elected into that, into that board position.

And state advocacy is so important because in all reality, the only thing happening at a federal level in terms of our day to day practice is Medicare.

So Medicare law is all federal, but any other law, whether you can prescribe, whether you can perform procedures, what your relationship is with your supervising or collaborating physician is all defined at a state level.

And so the AAPA does such great things that they really actually can't affect your day to day practice.

You know, they can create this high level idea of OTP, but NISPA has to implement that and all other 49 states have to implement that.

And so again, I went from wanting to have a drink with these really cool gay people at AAPA to now working on state policy and going to Albany, which is so not my scene.

But that's all right.

It's really important work.

And I've met such awesome people working at the state level as well.

It's been a really great experience.

And so the other thing with that is, you know, if you think I'm supporting APA already, it costs a lot of money.

You know, it's really important that you also are supporting your state organization because that's really where your practice ability comes from.

So if at different levels, somebody who's pre PA versus a PA student versus let's say a new grad pa, where would you recommend they start looking or getting connections to try to get more involved.

So I always have a hard time with this question because I think back to PA school and the thought of like putting something else on my plate and just how impossible that might have been, but I'm actually just Thinking of this now, I was really involved in theater in college, and that was the one thing I chose that I would maintain through PA school.

And so I maintained my relationship with the theater group and put on a couple productions during PA school.

And actually, you know, I needed that outlet.

I needed, like, something else.

And so I guess if BA leadership was, like, your thing, maybe that would be.

Maybe that would be a good outlet.

But you really can get involved anywhere along the line.

Every one of these constituent organizations has a really strong need for student leadership.

AAPA's biggest delegation in the House of Delegates is the student delegation with nispa.

We have three student directors, and so these are elected into a direct position that actually has just as much power as I do.

Because on the board of directors in the LBGTPA caucus, we have scholarships where we give, usually around two students a scholarship to attend an APA conference.

But it's also leadership and development throughout the year.

And that's been a really successful program.

There's been just about everyone who's gone through it has launched into a leadership position in some way, shape or form, often with a caucus.

But actually, I think one person went on to, like, Human Rights Campaign.

And Phil Burke was a student.

He just got an award from the Iowa Society of pa.

I don't know what they're called, but the Iowa PA Group for being a leader within their House of Delegates group.

And so, you know, whatever your interest is, if you know what specialty you want to go into, you're thinking about, you know, I'm sure there's student leadership positions available within that.

You know, your state organization will have something available, or you can always get onto a committee.

All these organizations have these committees who are just.

They're not elected positions.

They're.

They're appointed by a committee chair.

And so it's something where you can start to get involved.

And it might be a call every other month for an hour to talk about.

For example, in this program, we have, like, a membership committee or government affairs committee that looks at policy in New York, and they're always looking for students because you're the future of the PA profession and your input is absolutely valuable.

You can't just have a bunch of old PAs who have been practicing for 20 years and who, you know, have all these preconceived notions.

We want, like, young people who are excited about their careers and thinking about everything they could do as a PA and just have, like, a totally open mind.

So there's always opportunities to get involved.

And I really like People to think of like, here's your organization.

You have aapa, you have a state organization, you have a specialty organization and you have.

There's some special interest organization that's going to.

So you have four organizations.

Somewhere in there, there's got to be something for you.

What does your time commitment look like for your current roles?

It is all over the place and it depends so much on the time of year.

The NISPA conference was just in the fall and leading up to that was pretty hectic.

Typically boards will have either an hour to a two hour call once a month or like a long eight hour day every four months or every three months quarterly.

And then in between that sort of whatever amount of work you accomplished, I'd say in an actual board role I probably maybe eight hours a week in a leadership position.

Otherwise it might be like one hour a week, but it fluctuates so much.

That might be like 20 hour week right before the conference and then after the conference is over, like I might not do anything for two months and that's sort of where I am right now, which is a great thing.

All right, so.

So one last question.

I feel like we've covered a lot of this.

What is like the top, we'll say one or two like thing policy controversy that people need to know about when it comes to the PA profession.

I know what I think mine is, but.

So I think the absolute biggest thing to me is competition.

And I'm trying to think if I can do this without naming names.

And I don't think I can.

I love nurse practitioners.

I think they're absolutely wonderful.

But we have got to keep up with them.

We have no other option.

And if we do not, our profession will disappear.

And that's such a cop out answer because it's such a huge umbrella.

Yeah.

No, but I get like.

So mine keep just because I feel like it's the one everyone is talking about even in our little group is the name change stuff with all that going on or the proposed name change, which I think some people use to say, like that will help us in this competition, which to be honest, it shouldn't be a competition.

Like there's room for everyone.

But I totally get that.

You know, in some states especially there's just they're better at advocating for themselves than we are and they have more money and so it's tough.

Yeah.

Nurses are such a, it's such a strong profession.

It's been around forever.

They do wonderful, wonderful work and you know, it's a whole Range of things, too.

Right.

PAs are sort of like in a set place of what we do, whereas nurses, you have everything from a associate's degree to a doctorate, a nurse practitioner, and everything in between.

So you have a really wide range of what nursing means.

And maybe I actually agree with you.

I'm not sure competition is the right word, but it's not competition, but just a matter of keeping up with.

Yeah.

Well, at a bare minimum, I actually.

Really like that you said competition, because I feel like that's also the.

That's probably like, if you asked physicians, like, what's your biggest issue with PAs, they'd probably say competition, that they feel like we're coming after them.

But, like, that's not my mindset at all.

I think I love the collaborative relationships that we have.

And like, you practice.

I practice very similarly, where, you know, like, I probably, at this point very rarely need.

Need my doctor to come in and actually look at something.

Like, if I do it super weird.

Yeah.

And I may ask it, like, I may ask about something every once in a while, but it kind of goes both ways, like you were saying, too.

And so I really value that.

I think that's important.

I wouldn't not want that in my job.

But I think some of these physicians fear that we're coming after them and going to take over.

And so I think we all just need to get along a little bit.

I wonder.

There's so many PAs going into hospital administrators, which is something that we haven't done as a profession until very recently, but nurses have.

And I think that it's a growing thing, and I think it's really important.

It is.

And I always sort of wonder.

Their perspective, I think, is really valuable in seeing what's happening at that high level.

As an administrator in the hospital, are PAs actually taking physician jobs?

As that physician leaves?

They think, well, we can pay a physician.

There's.

Or we can pay a PA vis, you know, let's get a PA instead.

And I think when it comes to name change, we all have our own experience, but I also really value the administrator role of, like, does that word assistant really, in a board meeting, do people get really hung up on that?

And when you meet with your.

With your representative, does your representative in the state or whatever, do they really get hung up on that word assistant?

And.

If a patient does or doesn't, we've all had mixed experiences, but at a big level, what is happening and is that really a meaningful change or not?

And I don't have the answer to that.

If I stayed PA, I wouldn't have no issue.

But I think there's a bigger question there that no individual can answer.

Yeah, there's lots.

We'll see where our profession is and who knows, 10, 20 something years, but yeah.

Well, this was great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

This is fun.

All right, so I think that Jonathan answered all those questions about advocacy way better than I could because he's so involved and he really inspires me to get involved.

So I just, I appreciate his time coming on here.

So thanks Jonathan and everyone should go follow him.

Erectal Rockstar on Instagram.

He puts out some great advice and just kind of blurbs about what's going on in the PA profession and things you should know about as well as just patient advocacy as well.

So that's all we have today.

I look forward to seeing you guys next week and if there's anything I can help you out with, let me know.

Have a good week.