Lauren Gentile went from urgent care and family medicine into teaching, and she's now faculty at the College of Saint Elizabeth.

We talk about why she made that switch, which is a career path most students don't even know exists. PAs teach, and the good ones bring recent clinical experience into the classroom with them.

Her advice for people choosing programs is practical: look at PANCE pass rates and look at how clinical rotations are set up. Does the program place you, or are you finding your own preceptors? That difference will shape your entire second year.

She also makes a point I'll keep repeating - a background that isn't the standard bio-major track is a strength, not a liability. Programs want a class with range.

What we talk about:

• Moving from clinical practice into PA education
• Working in urgent care and family medicine
• Why PANCE pass rates matter when choosing a program
• Questions to ask about clinical rotation placement
• How a non-traditional background helps your application
• Her advice for applicants in the middle of a cycle

Resources:

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

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

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

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

Mentioned in this episode:

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Hey guys, in today's episode, we're talking to Lauren Gentile.

She is a PA who has just recently transitioned to being on faculty.

So we're talking about why she chose to go to an academic role and a little bit about her background.

Enjoy.

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 everyone, thanks for listening.

If we've never met before, my name is Savannah Perry.

I am a dermatology PA and I'm the creator of the PA platform, which is what this little Pre PA Club podcast was kind of born out of.

But I am really excited for this next couple months because I have some really interesting interviews for you guys.

So some things that have been requested, talking to a spouse of someone who's in PA school.

So that's coming up.

I got a request to talk to a neurology PA and so we're trying to get that scheduled right now.

But if anything, if there's someone or something you want to hear about, please let me know because I would love to try to find those people.

Some of my interviews are people who come to me.

Some of my interviews are people I find.

But if there's something you want to hear, I would love to try to find that for you.

It's also interview season right now, so if you're struggling with that, next week.

We're going to have an episode for.

You with just some interview tips, kind of basics.

It's stuff that's pulled from the PA school interview course.

If you missed a few episodes back.

We talked about that, it'[email protected] and of course you can always use the code Future PA on that as well as any of the services on the PA platform, including our mock interviews.

I'm hoping to introduce you guys soon to a couple new coaches who are joining our team that I'm really excited about.

So I'll give some more availability for scheduling mock interviews.

But.

Alright, so before we jump into our interview today with Lauren and I'll let her introduce herself to you, I do want to mention our sponsors, of course, MyPA resource, which is a personal statement editing service specifically for PA school essays.

That's all that they edit and do.

And so I'm one of the editors.

If you have questions about that, you can reach out directly to my PA resource and you can use that same code future PA for a discount there as well as on paschool prep.com, which is another online course, but specifically for people who are about to start PA school.

So in that kind of awkward interim between getting accepted, starting school, that's where PA school prep comes in.

And you can also use the code futurepa there for a discount on that course.

Alright, let's jump into our interview with Lauren, and I think you're gonna enjoy it.

My name is Lauren Gentile.

I'm a physician assistant.

I graduated from Rutgers University for my PA degree.

I did urgent care for about a year, then I switched to family Med for two years and now I'm teaching at the College of St Elizabeth at their physician assistant program.

And I'm back at the urgent care doing one day a week as my clinical day.

Okay, cool.

So when did you graduate from PA school?

Okay, cool.

So, yeah, a little bit right before you.

All right, so what, what led you to the PA profession?

So I always knew I wanted to be in the medical field.

And I feel like a lot of people who want to be in the medical field, they automatically just think, oh, a doctor or a nurse.

And I was actually kind of guilty of that.

I was definitely just wanting to do doctor.

I always wanted to be, you know, to go into medical school.

I wanted to be a doctor.

But I took two years off in between undergrad and PA school just because I didn't know if, you know, do I really want to be a doctor?

I'm not totally sure I know I want to be in medicine, but is this really what I wanted?

And within that time, I actually met a PA in a fitness class.

And I have never, I had never heard of PAs before, so I wasn't exactly sure what they did.

So I reached out to him and talked to him about the PA field and the career and what it entails.

And I was like, wow, this is actually exactly what want the lateral mobility, allowing to go into different specialties and kind of spending more time with patients.

So that's what shifted my focus from just being a doctor to going into the PA career.

Okay, so once you made that decision, how did your path change?

What steps did you take?

So I had no patient contact experience whatsoever.

So I.

What I did was for a year I worked as a clinical information manager or a scribe.

So I worked in an er, but that wasn't really patient contact experience.

So the PA that I met through the fitness class, his name is John Philip, Philip Vesta.

He does the Excel education pre physician assistant clerkship program.

So I Actually did that program with him as his first student.

So that's how I gained all of my patient care experience.

So I got a lot of hours with him and it really solidified my, you know, want and need for it to go to PA school.

Okay, so did you.

So you kind of did all the necessary steps and then it came time to apply.

What were you looking for in a program when it came to that application process?

So I definitely wanted a program that had a high pass rate on the pants.

I wanted to make sure that they really prepared you because at the end of the day, you got to pass that exam.

You have to get your license.

So I wanted to make sure of that.

And I also wanted to be sure that there was a lot of time on clinical rotations.

So Rutgers, they had a little bit longer of a program, three years.

So we got a lot of experience on rotations, which was awesome.

And we also had about a class size of 50, but it was like a very, like one on one.

You know, all the professors knew your name.

So I also wanted that experience and Rutgers definitely gave me that.

Okay, how many schools did you apply to?

I actually just applied to Rutgers.

I know I should have applied to more than one, but I was putting all of my eggs in one basket there.

Thankfully I got in, but I know that's not really the best route to go just to apply to one program.

Did you feel confident in your application or were you kind of just like, I'm gonna throw this out there and see what happens?

I did feel confident.

I feel like sometimes you just gotta go with your gut.

And I was like, I just think that this is the right choice and I got in.

But I know that, you know, you definitely should be applying to more, but I had a feeling that it was the right choice.

And that's something that's interesting because I feel like there is in some cases a mentality of I'm just going to figure out where I fit the requirements and apply to all of those programs.

And not really that thought of like, is this actually a good fit?

Do they have what is going to be the best for me as far as learning environment or like you said, a little bit longer program where you get more experience.

So that's interesting that.

I mean, you kind of went the opposite route and actually put thought into it and chose somewhere that you felt like was a really great fit.

And obviously they agreed, which is awesome.

Yeah.

Got you into school.

What do you think stood out the most about your application?

I think in terms of the Application.

I really do think that the Excel program helped me kind of like stand out from other people just because it's such a unique program.

And it gave me just this patient contact experience that I don't think I could have gotten anywhere else.

I mean, I was able to speak to patients every single day, get involved with, you know, how they were doing at the facility that they were at.

It was nothing medical, but, you know, I was able to build relationships with patients.

It was like, it was a. I think mine was a.

Almost a year or nine months or a year that I was in that program.

And it really just made me develop my, my patient skills because I think a lot of times people too, when they start PA school, they haven't even touched a patient.

So I was very comfortable speaking to patients.

You know, I would listen to heart and lungs, and it made me realize exactly what a PA does.

And I've done a couple of interviews for prepa students and even students are wanting to go to the Excel program and even interviews for people who want to go to PA school.

And I think they don't even really know what a PA is sometimes.

And that really solidified my understanding of what a PA does.

So I think that really helped me when I went on my interview.

That's something specific to the New Jersey area.

Is that right?

Yeah.

Yep.

Gotcha.

So once you got into Rutgers, what was the most difficult part of PA school for you?

So we talked a little bit before that.

Y' all have your first class starting in less than a month at College of St. Elizabeth.

So what, what would your advice be to those people who are about to jump into probably the hardest couple of years of their life?

Yes, definitely.

I think for, for me, the hardest part was the stamina of just keep going.

You know, you get fed all of this information in such a short amount of time and you get tested on it, and then right when you think you're going to have a break, you don't.

You get a bunch more information thrown at you.

You got to take a test on it.

It's just non stop.

And it wasn't even so much the information that was difficult, I guess.

I mean, of course, obviously the information's not easy, but.

But I think it was just constantly having to study every single day, on the weekends, on the holidays, and you had to keep that up.

My program was three years, but even if it's 27 months, even if it's two years, it's a long time to just have to sit down every night and study.

And keep going.

And keep going without saying, like, okay, I've had enough.

So just keeping that up was a little bit rough.

But did y' all get breaks at Rutgers, it being three years?

Yeah.

So the first year we had summer off, which was nice.

Yeah.

But then the second year we had rotations all through summer.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

Okay.

So then you transitioned into urgent care.

Was that kind of where you envisioned yourself ending up in family medicine or what were your kind of thoughts, and how did you end up in that role?

So initially I actually wanted to work with HIV AIDS patients.

That was my ultimate passion.

I absolutely loved it.

When I was in PA school, I got to rotate for four weeks, I mean, eight weeks with.

An HIV clinic.

And I just fell in love with it.

I tried everything I could to find a job in it, but there was just no openings.

I'm from New Jersey, so I called almost all the clinics that you could possibly find in New Jersey and there weren't any jobs.

So I actually went to my advisor and I said, what do I do?

Because this is what I love, but I don't know where to go next.

And her advice to me was, when you graduate PA school, my advice is to kind of stick to something that you can get experience from all across the board.

So either, er, urgent care, where you see everything, you can use all of your skills.

So that's why I applied to an urgent career to start.

Okay, cool.

Do you think that was helpful in solidifying that education?

I went into derm and I feel like I've lost so much of my knowledge over the past five years.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's definitely.

I mean, when you get.

When you go to urgent care or er, I think in any field, like, you're kind of just thrown in, you got to start.

So urgent care was everything.

It could range from a cold to a huge laceration.

So you really had to kind of use the skills that you just learned.

So I think it's a great place to start if you want to practice your skills, really learn everything across the board.

It really, it was a great first job for me.

What would a typical day working in urgent care look like?

So for urgent care, you would start the day by seeing how many people would be waiting outside at the door.

But it's very busy, it's very fast paced.

Patients can come in.

It depends on the urgent care that you work for.

They may come in for just plain old physicals for school, so you would deal with that.

But everything, every day is different.

You can have a slow day where there's not many patients, or you can have a very, very busy day where you see four patients an hour.

Again, ranging from things very basic to broken bones.

And in between, when you kind of have the downtime, you can do labs, you can do callbacks to see how the patients are doing and do kind of.

And do kind of paperwork.

But every day I feel like in urgent care it was just so different.

And so now they are moving into academics.

You'll only be doing one clinical day a week.

Yes.

And I'm actually going.

I'm at the same urgent care that I was previously when I first started.

Yes.

So I'm there one day a week.

What, when you were full time there, what were your demands as far as days per week?

So it was 2:12 and 2:8.

2:12 Hours and 2:8 hours.

Okay, so.

And then you had to work.

It was I think at least two weekend days a month, or four, I think it was.

It wasn't bad.

You know, I feel like there's benefits to everything with urgent care, you know, even though you had to do 12 hours, you had the next day off, you know, so that was really nice.

But it varied depending on which days you worked.

But you had to work some holidays and some weekends.

Gotcha.

Okay, well, now that you're shifting into an academic role, what.

What kind of.

I mean, was that something that you envisioned yourself doing or what inspired that change?

You know, I never like said to myself, oh, I'm going to be in academics one day.

But I've always had.

I've always had like a draw towards education.

When I was an undergrad, I tutored students in biology and in English.

I really like that one on one kind of mentoring a student.

And with the Excel program, which I now I'm a part of, I don't do any formal teaching of lectures, but, you know, we teach the students what makes it, you know, how do you write a good essay or how do you interview well and just kind of that like peer to peer mentoring and teaching.

I was like, I really like this and I just kind of kept my feelers out.

And I saw the opening at St. Elizabeth and I was like, this is great.

And now I'm here.

Awesome.

So what will your role be there?

So I'm an assistant professor, so I will be teaching full time.

The first class I'm doing is Patient Centered Communication and approach to Diversity.

So I'm going to be teaching just how to really communicate with patients of all different backgrounds, of all different styles, statuses.

And then I'm also going to be teaching how to take a patient history, which should be pretty fun.

I'm excited to do that this first semester.

Cool.

That sounds fun.

I always kind of wanted to get into teaching, but I also like working in Durham, so I go to help out with my program when I can and then obviously do kind of some teaching and guidance through the PA platform.

But so have you been able to help with admissions at all?

Yeah, I actually did a little bit because I just started in July, so they were interviewing students prior to me starting.

But I did a couple of interviews, and I really enjoyed it.

You know, I was in that position, so it's nice to see students in the same position that you were in and just making them feel good while they're there.

I mean, they're nervous, they're worried, but it's really cool just to kind of be on the other side and see what we're looking for for, you know, a PA student.

What would you say?

From what you've seen and kind of through the application process, what would you say makes a strong PA school applicant or make someone stand out to you that makes you either go, I want to meet them, or at an interview makes you go, this person's awesome.

They need to be in our class.

You know, I really think what makes an applicant stand out is they have a passion or they come from a background other than science or medicine.

You know, I feel like everyone sort of looks similar when they apply and that they've all had their biology courses, all their chem courses.

They've been EMTs, they've been, you know, CMAs, they're all in the medical field.

But I recently just interviewed a girl who was an English major.

She just took all the required courses to get in, but she.

She said, I really think that being an English major helped me because now I know how to communicate with different populations of people and the art of language.

And I was like, wow, that's awesome.

Like, a huge part of medicine and healthcare is knowing how to effectively communicate.

So I thought that that made her stand out totally from.

From other applicants that I've seen.

So I think when you come from a little bit of a different background or you have something other than medicine, because we all love medicine, we all are gonna come from a science background.

But if you have that something a little different, to me, it really makes you stand out.

Have you seen any major red flags?

It's crazy, but people don't know what PAs are, and they still Apply.

They.

They come to an interview, and it.

It blows my mind that they don't know the role of a PA and.

And what they do and that that's a red flag because, you know, if you don't know what it is, why do you want to be a P.A.

Yeah, that is a red flag for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Probably know what you're applying for.

All right.

And then what?

So a lot of people.

It's September, so a lot of people are kind of in this waiting game right now.

What advice?

So let's say someone's applied.

Maybe they aren't getting interviews or they're not hearing back from interviews.

What kind of advice would you give to that applicant right now?

So I feel like if they're in the waiting process and they're.

They're waiting to hear back from a school, at this point, I would just say let it be.

I mean, you can obsess over it.

You know, think what you could have done better.

Think you.

You sent something that was, you know, not what the school wanted, but because I. I did that, I was, like, obsessing over my application.

But I feel like after a certain point, you just have to let it be.

You applied, you have to wait and see, and if it doesn't turn out the way that you wanted to, you know, you will find a way to get into school.

If it's something that you want, just know that you will do whatever it takes to get in.

But I think when you're kind of stressing out and obsessing over hearing back or, you know, waiting to hear from the school, I think you kind of just have to let that go a little bit.

Yeah, no, it's.

It's a tough, tough place to be in, but, yeah, I can't do anything.

Just keep working on stuff.

Well, yeah.

Well, thank you so much for taking your time.

And we'll put the link to how to contact everyone at the College of St. Elizabeth in the.

In the description.

Awesome.

But, yeah.

And any other advice or tips or insights.

I just think if it's something that you want, you can do it.

And I think, too, a lot of people who are applying think they have to be the smartest in their class or they had to do these crazy, you know, things before applying to school, like go on these, you know, crazy missions and stuff like that, which are all wonderful.

But if it's something you really want, don't doubt yourself just because you may think you're not, you know, that you may not be able to compare to somebody else because you have something to give and if you want it, you absolutely can do it.

That is perfect advice because yeah, everyone, everyone's story is unique.

Doesn't have to be crazy.

Awesome.

Well, thank you so, so much for taking the time to talk to me and I'm sure this was super helpful.

Thank you.

Alright, guys, there you have it.

So I hope you found that helpful.

If you have any questions, remember you can reach out to me directly on Instagram at the PA platform or my email Savannah with no h@the PA platform.com actually probably infoepaplatform.com is easier, but I'm around.

I would love to hear from you.

I would love to see your review.

If you haven't subscribed, go ahead and do that and I will see you guys next week.

Bye.