He was already an RN. He still chose PA school.

Kanan Brown spent two years working in the emergency department as a nurse before deciding to apply to PA programs. He first got interested in medicine by shadowing his aunt, who is a practicing PA, and that stuck with him.

Going from nursing to PA isn't as simple as it sounds. Kanan had to go back and pick up extra coursework, because nursing prereqs and PA prereqs don't line up the way you'd expect, and every program wants something a little different. We talk through what he had to take and how he figured out which classes counted where.

He applied to ten schools, got two acceptances, and picked the one closer to home. If you're a nurse thinking about this switch, or anyone weighing PA against another path, this one's for you.

What we cover:

• Why he chose PA over staying in nursing or going the NP route
• Shadowing a PA and how that shaped his decision
• Extra prereq coursework required after a nursing degree
• How prerequisites vary from program to program
• Applying to ten schools and what came back
• Choosing between two acceptances

Resources:

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

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

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

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

Mentioned in this episode:

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One of the most requested interviews that we get is to talk to someone who has switched from nursing to pa.

So today we're talking to Kanan Brown, and he's going to tell you all about his decision to go from being an RN to 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, thanks so much for tuning into the Pre PA Club podcast.

I hope that everyone is well and surviving this hysteria and stuff that's surrounding the coronavirus and staying healthy.

It's pretty crazy.

And as someone who works in healthcare, I'm in dermatology, so I wouldn't say I'm necessarily on the front lines of this.

It's been an interesting conversation and watching the conversations being had about this kind of novel virus that we don't know much about.

So again, I just hope that everyone is healthy and handling it well and keeping up with the news and washing your hands, because that is the number one most important thing.

In light of this coronavirus, which I didn't do an introduction.

I'll do it in a second.

If you were planning on attending the Pre PA conference in Atlanta, we have decided to postpone that.

So it will not be happening at the end of March.

Just with all of the logistics surrounding coronavirus and that there are some cases in Atlanta.

Logistically, we don't want you to come to a conference that there is no one to speak at if all the speakers are either having to be called into work or quarantined or who knows what.

So that will be held at a later date.

We're working on some other option as well.

Options as well, to try to make it even more accessible to more people.

And, yeah, so we have hope that it'll happen, just not in three weeks.

All right.

So, by the way, I am Savannah Perry.

I am a dermatology pa.

I have been doing that for five and a half years now.

I love my job.

I think I chose a great career, and that's why I help other people decide if becoming a PA is the career for them by doing all of this stuff through the PA platform.

So just a refresher on where you can find us.

We have the podcast, which you can listen to on the website or anywhere you listen to podcasts on the paplatform.com, we have a bunch of free downloads.

We have an experience log, a personal statement checklist, personal statement worksheets, with a two week email course to help you get your personal statement first draft done.

We have interview workshop worksheets, a resume template, an application checklist and timeline.

I honestly don't remember everything that's on there, but there are a lot of resources so make sure you check that out if you are wanting to be organized and kind of looking for things.

We are on instagram @the PA platform on YouTube.

We have videos and this interview will be posted on YouTube.

If you'd rather watch it, then listen, which I do recommend or I'm also I've recently started a TikTok and if any of y' all have TikTok, I think it is so much fun and there are some awesome PAs kind of spreading the word about PAs on TikTok, which I think is so cool.

And I've been posting some PA videos as well so I'm on there.

Savannah Perry, if you are on TikTok, come find me.

So lots of fun, fun stuff.

We also have the pre PA Club Facebook group which you can hop in.

We almost at 9,000 members, which blows my mind but is so exciting because I mean so many people want to become PAs, which is the best thing ever.

But all right, so before we jump into today's interview with Kanan Brown, who is really cool.

Like you're gonna listen and be like, oh my gosh, I want to be friends with him.

He does a lot of videos on YouTube talking about his experience as a nurse and now he's going to be talking about becoming a PA because he'll be starting PA school in September.

And so we talk a lot about that, why he chose PA instead of NP and what his experience looks like coming from the background of having a BSN and working as an rn.

So yeah, that's really great.

I want to mention our sponsors.

So the number one sponsor we have is mypa Resource and I do edit for them.

They are a personal statement editing service specifically for PA school.

So we go through, we make sure that your essay is on point when it comes to content, grammar and flow and just really try to polish it up so that you're ready to submit.

So you definitely want to get on that.

And then our second sponsor is paschoolprep.com which is an online course that helps you get ready for PA school by refreshing your anatomy and physiology knowledge as well as and kind of get you ready for those first tough subjects that tend to hit in PA school on both of those websites as well as the PA platform.

You can use the code Future PA for a discount on any service item, book, whatever.

Alright, so let's get to it.

I'm so, so, so, so, so, so excited to introduce you to Kanan Brown.

He is, like I said, just really cool, really great to talk to.

He is on Instagram and also on YouTube and I'll link to all of that in the description so that and follow along on his journey.

All right, let's meet Kanan.

So, hi guys.

My name is Kanan.

I live in Las Vegas.

I'm an ER nurse here in Las Vegas.

I've been practicing for a little over two years now.

And big question that a lot of people ask me is going to PA school.

So I'm one of the nurses that are attending PA school this fall.

So that's kind of why we're doing this interview.

You guys can get some information on that?

Yes, this was a much requested topic.

Is is there anyone out there who is a nurse who's decided to go the PA route instead of the NP route?

So I'm interested to kind of hear your why and how you got to this point.

But to back it up a little bit, kind of, where did your interest in medicine come?

What led you to becoming a nurse?

Good question.

So my interest came at the end of freshman year of college.

I kind of moved from Las Vegas to Washington State freshman year.

My family's from Washington and my aunt, she's actually a PA right now, practicing emergency medicine up there.

And I was kind of doing the whole police route.

That was kind of my career goal at the time.

Suffered an injury, and when I had that injury, I kind of didn't have anything to do for about two months because I was used to riding with the police department when I wasn't at school.

And my aunt said, hey, why don't you come shadow me in the hospital?

You know, see if you like it.

So I didn't absolutely fell in love with it.

So my aunt's actually a PA, has been doing that for a little over 20 years now.

But she was an ER nurse before she went to PA school.

So the whole idea behind my route is definitely coming from her.

Okay, cool.

So what were you studying in school before then?

Did you kind of switch it up after that or made a transition?

Gotcha.

I had to kind of switch that up after a year, year and a half.

Okay, so you was your goal the whole time to kind of emulate what she had done and do nursing and then PA or how did that decision to kind of further your education come into play?

I think it was a small part of it.

I think I had a small part in the back of my mind that I might end up doing this entire route.

At first, I definitely just wanted to do the nursing thing.

I didn't think I was smart enough to do nursing, let alone going to medicine.

So I. I had it in the back of my mind, but I didn't actually think I was gonna be able to do it.

And so first I said, you know what?

I'll apply to nursing school.

I'll do that route first.

And so I moved back to Las Vegas, changed my major, started doing all the prerequisite courses that I needed in order to apply to nursing school, and kind of started realizing, you know, I can do this, you know, because I didn't do very well in high school, I graduated with a very low GPA and didn't really apply myself.

And so once I started to see that, hey, if I pay attention and do what I'm supposed to do, I can actually do pretty well in these courses.

So once I found out that I can get into nursing school, I got accepted, and I said, you know what?

I think I can probably apply to PA School here soon too.

Okay.

How long have you been a nurse?

A little over two years.

Okay.

One of the questions I get a lot is about choosing nursing as a major for PA school.

It's great experience, of course, but did your education that you got from being a nurse fulfill everything you needed for PA School, or did you have to kind of do some extra stuff?

I had to do some extra stuff.

Okay.

Depending on the school and the part of the country you're going to school at.

You know, obviously, the PA Schools you're applying to, their requirements are so different, but I did have to take a year of general chemistry because the nursing chemistry they required was kind of an introductory chemistry course.

And then I had to take a semester of general biology.

And luckily, most of the schools I applied to didn't require organic chemistry, so I didn't do that.

Nice.

Yeah.

So I had to take three courses.

Three extra courses.

Okay.

And you did those while you were working?

I.

Yes, I did two.

The two chemistry courses I did while I was working, and then the.

The biology course I did in the summer of nursing school.

Okay, cool.

Gotcha.

So let's talk about your kind of job now, and then we'll talk more about Becoming a pa.

But just so people understand, because I feel like there's a lot of misconception about.

Well, there's just a lot of different types of nurses.

So can you break down for us, and I know you do this great on your YouTube channel, but can you give us a little breakdown of just kind of the different nursing degrees, what each entails a little bit and what you do?

Yeah.

So there are different nursing degrees.

There's a two year associate degree nursing degree, and then there's a four year BSN degree.

That's the one that I have.

Both do the same job.

They both get jobs in the same areas.

The pay is pretty much the exact same.

The only difference is they're starting to push more towards obviously higher educated nurses.

So baccalaureate degree nurses.

So, yeah, the positions are the exact same.

The only difference is the level of education that they have.

I, you know, I know pas kind of back in the day they could have bachelor's degrees.

Yeah.

So obviously, you know, academic inflation, we're increasing the level of education everyone needs and things like that.

And so, so the job is the exact same, but those are the two routes you can do.

So I did two years of prerequisite courses, then applied to nursing school and did two more years for a total of four.

And right now I work at the emergency department.

I do work with associate degree nurses that work in the emergency department too.

A lot of them are a little older, so they're the nurses that have been working for 20, 30 years.

And my job in the ER is to see and assess emergent patients along with some of the ER doctors, PAs and MPs.

And we see both emergent and non emergent patients.

Sometimes they're urgent care patients and our primary care patients.

And yeah, we assess them, find out what's going on, get a diagnosis, treat that and send them upstairs to either be admitted or maybe to surgery if it's that emergent, which happens sometimes.

Being a nurse right now and pursuing pa. Are there any ways that you feel limited in your position?

What.

I guess my question is, what will becoming a PA kind of fulfill for you that you're not able to do right now?

Right.

That's a great question.

Sorry.

You probably feel like you're back at PA school interviews or something.

It'll be able to fill one, a level of autonomy and two, a level of treating patients that I can't do right now.

So the good thing is, in the er, ER nurses have a lot of autonomy compared to certain nurses on the floor.

So we implement a lot of things without doctor's orders and things like that because they need to be done in an emergency situation.

With that being said, Overall, PAs, nurse practitioners and physicians in the error, they see the patient, assess the patient, they figure out what we're going to order in terms of labs, imaging, things like that.

I do not do that, even though I know what things need to be done.

Once they receive those things, they culminate all of them and create a diagnosis and a treatment plan for this patient.

I do not do that.

So I just essentially, at this point, follow the orders that are being done for these patients.

Now, obviously, again, the more experience you have in the emergency department, the more you get good with really identifying what this patient even needs before the doc even does it.

So a lot of times we'll protocol certain labs or protocol images and things like that, depending on how the patient's presenting.

But that's going to be the gap that's going to fill this at my level of care or how I treat my patients can be a lot more than what I'm currently doing now.

So I'll be a lot more involved.

Okay.

Yeah.

Did you consider NP or nurse anesthesist?

There's, you know, some different routes as far as furthering your nursing degree and that, you know, that's.

I don't say it's controversial, but it's this huge debate of PA versus np.

And so I think you probably have more insight than others.

Yeah, I did, I did.

I did consider.

The first one I definitely considered was CRNA school.

The second was MP school.

And, you know, the reason I didn't do CRNA is actually one of my letters of recommendation for PA school and for my nursing job I have now was an anesthesiologist.

And I shadowed him plenty of times.

He's a good, okay, friend of my mother's, and I just didn't like anesthesia.

I didn't.

I respect the field.

And, you know, he loves what he absolutely.

You know, he absolutely loves what he does.

But for when I was shadowing him, I just.

I didn't feel like that was something that I would want to do for the rest of my life.

A lot of times they're taking care of the patients, they're under sedation, they're kind of doing one thing at any given time, just focusing.

One part of the or and I just kind of like moving around like the emergency medicine side of things.

So I knew that I didn't want to go to CRNA school for that specific reason.

I just didn't like anesthesia, but it is a great job.

Second was nurse practitioner school.

And obviously going through nursing school, they're very biased about this.

All the questions that we have on all of our stems revolve around nurse practitioners and doing things like that.

And the ultimate decision that I made in regards to that was the educational differences.

So I really sat down, looked at the educational pathway that nurse practitioners had to go through and PAs had to go through.

And for me, I felt as if I felt fit more with what the PA education was, giving the in person lectures, the medicine of everything.

Whereas a lot of my friends who are nurses are in NP school and they're typing a lot of papers.

They don't like the fact that it's very nursing theory based.

There's not a lot of medicine in it.

And so that's kind of the decision that made me really start thinking, okay, nurse practitioner might not be the route as well as the lateral mobility.

So PAs without a doubt have a lot more.

Their lateral mobility is a lot easier than nurse practitioners.

Nurse practitioners are catered to certain population of patients, so adults or pediatrics.

And so if you have an acute care nurse practitioner, they can't treat pediatric patients.

So if they plan on being in the icu, they can't come down to the ER because you're going to see pediatric patients and things like that.

It's just really confusing.

And you know, I just didn't really want to get into that.

So the PA education pathway fit more with what I wanted for one.

And for two, I just like the lateral mobility that PAs have.

Yeah, great answer.

Okay, so sounds like you're very confident in your decision.

Kind of knew what you wanted to do, which is great.

What did your application process look like?

Stressful, of course.

Of course, Yeah, A part of me.

So I, I, so I've been planning this, right?

So this is five years in the making, I'm planning this.

And so finally I get to the time where I can apply.

So I start picking schools and I start realizing, okay, I don't have organic chemistry, I don't have physics genetics, so I can't apply to these schools.

So like Yale, I really wanted to apply to Yale couldn't, because they required genetics.

And so I trimmed down my list in terms of what course or what schools I can actually apply to.

Once I did that then I started, you know, using the resources that I had.

So James Kim, one of the PAs, he's great.

Yeah, good friend.

Mine lives here in Vegas.

So I started texting him saying, hey, man, this is very confusing, Caspa, I'm not sure what I'm doing.

So he helped me tremendously.

Met at Starbucks, talked about the whole thing, reached out to a few other people to help me, and started applying to all these different schools and had a really good friend who I was actually taking a chemistry course with who got accepted into the school that I just got accepted to.

And he was kind of helping me tell me what things he made mistakes on and things like that.

So pretty much my entire summer we were going on vacation too.

So I was, you know, in Yosemite and I would wake up early in the morning and I was writing personal statements and, you know, or all the statements that they require you to do when you apply to certain schools.

And I remember doing all that stuff, but I was just very stressed because a part of me knew that, hey, I have great experience, I feel that part of the P application, but I know my GPA is not better than a lot of people.

You know, I'm very average on that.

And so I was really nervous that, you know, schools would even contact me to do these things because, you know, they want a well rounded person.

And one of my.

One portion of one portion of my application was not that great.

And so that was something I was really nervous about.

And, you know, I put myself on the Internet.

And so at the time, I'm stressed out with that because I'm like, man, you know, I'm not gonna even get an interview offer.

And it's all over the Internet that I'm applying.

So it was a really stressful process for me, but I really enjoyed it.

Looking back on it now, it's funny, but at the time it was not right.

Yeah, no, I totally get you.

That's.

It's hard to understand unless you're the one going through it or you have someone else who's gone through it because everybody else just doesn't really understand.

But luckily it all worked out.

How many schools did you end up applying to?

I think I applied to 10.

Okay, what.

What were kind of your outcomes with interview invites and acceptances?

And so I had.

I applied to 10 schools and then I kind of knocked down the nine because one of them required a secondary application.

I didn't do it.

So out of the nine schools, I had, I think four interview offers.

I interviewed at West Liberty.

I interviewed no.

At University of Charleston in West Virginia, Reno in Nevada, UV Youth in Utah, and Loma Linda in California.

And then I received the interview offer from University of New England, but I didn't go to that one.

And then I received an interview at ohsu.

So five interview, six interview offers, and I went on five of them.

Okay, and then what were the outcomes there?

Wait.

Listed at two schools, rejected at one school, and then accepted at two.

Nice.

So you had a choice.

What came down to making your decision?

Location.

Yeah, the location.

Yeah, it was a lot closer.

So the only other school that accepted me was far on the East Coast.

So again, if it was the only school, I would have went to it, probably.

But I have family here, have a girlfriend here, so I want to stay close to everything here.

Is kind of plan that my girlfriend and I made.

So, yeah, makes sense.

That was my top.

My top thing to location.

But during your interviews, did your nursing background come up?

Did they ask about that specifically or did that.

Yeah, they definitely did.

And, you know, I think they.

People.

They found out before I would even interview with individually with them, because we would be.

And, you know, they bring you in a room, and everyone's.

Everyone's talking, and then they'll have people, you know, stand up and introduce themselves and tell them, you know, where they're coming from and what their experience is.

Yeah, I would say that.

And the whole room would, you know, turn around and look at me.

And, you know, so they kind of already knew before I even interviewed individually with them.

But it was definitely a talk of the interview process in the interviews and outside the interviews with the rest of the applicants.

Yeah, I think it's just.

And you tell me your thoughts, but I think it's just not that common because it is, like, it's great experience.

Really, really great experience, but it's a longer route to get there, and so it's not the route that most people take.

And so I guess that's where it's surprising because they're like, oh, you actually know what you're doing.

You didn't feed people and white butts.

There was one nurse in the interview as well, and then there was two nurses that were in the program at the time.

And, you know, there's becoming more and more.

So I was under the impression that I was going to be the only one.

And when I went to Reno, there was a nurse in the interview process, and then they had two nurses in the program.

And the same thing at Loma Linda in California, there was one nurse in the interview and two nurses were in the program.

So, you know, it's becoming more common.

But again, like you said, it's not a.

It's an aberrant path.

It's totally different.

And so a lot of people don't hear that, so they're very surprising.

Well, I think it's a good path, but.

All right.

So what's kind of next on your plan?

Are you thinking that you'll end up in the ER or kind of open to.

To see what that's gonna be like?

I think I'm definitely trying to be open, but I. I think a strong part of me is going to be back in an emergency medicine.

What I know is what I'm doing good at.

And, you know, that's the thing, is that I don't have to stay there forever.

Of course.

Yeah.

That's the beauty of it.

That's why I was really excited about it, so that I'm, you know, most likely maybe I'll change a few times.

But my aunt, she's done emergency medicine, plastic and reconstructive surgery, cardiothoracic surgery, but she's moved around a bit, too.

So I hope in the future that I'm sure, you know, with things family's changing in schedules and demands and family life, stuff like that, maybe I'll change around and see what works better.

But as of right now, emergency medicine might be it.

Yeah.

Is there anything that coming up with school starting, like, are you doing anything to prepare?

Are you still working or have you kind of taken a step back?

Yeah, I'm still working.

I'm still working.

Plan on working.

The plan is right now.

My girlfriend.

I kind of planned it out that at the beginning of the month of September, school starts in the end of September for me.

So probably the beginning of September is when I'll put my, you know, I quit, I'll stop working and.

But I'm gonna work up until then.

And then in terms of preparing, I just been relaxing.

You know, I.

When I.

Before I got to nursing school, you know, a lot of that question was coming around, you know, what should we do to prepare ourselves?

And everyone always advised, you know, just relax.

And now, having gone through it, I would recommend the same thing.

So.

Same thing here.

I'm treating it the same way.

Yeah.

Is there anything you're nervous about going into PA school?

Yeah.

Yeah.

One.

One, the academic load.

So I've been out of school now two years, so being transitioned back into that, and then two, a thing that I'm very, you know, apprehensive about is that if is my clinical experience going to, you know, mess me up when taking certain exams?

Because, you know, there's a huge difference with asking, answering questions on how they're teaching you versus how you see it in the clinic setting.

And I have a lot of experience now in that, and so I'm hoping that I can be able to put that aside and be enormously well everybody else.

No, I think it'll only help you.

For sure.

For sure.

Only help you.

I mean, I went into school as someone fresh out of undergrad who had pretty much zero exposure to all the different medicines and all that.

Like, even.

I mean, pharmacology is, to me, the hardest part of PA school.

So the fact that you have some background in that, like, honestly, everyone always says that the nurses in their program, like, kill it and do great.

Yeah, so you'll do great.

You'll do great.

Well, where can everyone kind of find you and follow along on the rest of your journey?

Yeah, so I'm on Instagram now.

I wasn't on Instagram through nursing school, so it's kind of a newer thing for me.

I'm on Instagram now at Kanan Brown, and then I'm on YouTube as well at Kanan Brown, so you can find me on both YouTube and Instagram.

Awesome.

Well, we'll link to all that so everybody can follow along with you.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

All right.

I appreciate you bringing me on.

This is awesome.

Yeah, no, it'll be very helpful, I'm sure.

I'll stop the recording.

Perfect.

Thank you.