My journey with ADVANCE began July 7th 2008 as I wrote about my days leading up to physician assistant school. I was excited, yet nervous, about what I was getting myself into. There were PAs in my life that encouraged me with words of hope and peace. They said the road would be hard, but each day would make me stronger. I remember feeling ...

The operating room is becoming more of a familiar place. I am much more comfortable with the preparation (positioning, shaving and draping the patient), intraoperative assisting (retracting, drilling and hammering) and wrapping up the case (suturing, bandaging and bracing). Looking back over the past month, I have logged over 40 cases with the ...

Our country is blessed to have medical regulatory boards that serve to protect patients and their providers. Some other parts of the world do not require a license or special privileges. Those countries just want help from anyone willing, and it does not always end well. So, the United States has a blessing and a curse. Since ...

This week I've been scheduled on nights, and it's been a completely different ER experience. While many of the chief complaints are the same as what I've seen during the day in the ER, the pace has been different. There is no doubt that things can get just as hectic at night as they do during the day, but for the most part, things usually tend to ...

Cheesy title, I know, but I thought it was appropriate for the lessons learned last week. I’m still in the orientation phase primarily because I do not have hospital privileges or malpractice insurance. I do have a temporary license!!! Can I get an ''Amen?'' For all the new grads and old grads, you remember the feeling. As soon as you got ...

No matter what I do, I seem like I'm always on the run. Balancing work, teaching, writing, running to my daughter's softball games, working out and tackling the long laundry list of daily activities provides little time for anything else. Finding a few minutes to refresh my knowledge of a medical topic is a difficult task. Or it was, until ...

Today my head is full from the past week. With only one shift left, my ED rotation is coming to an end. I will be sad to leave the excitement and variety but glad to have somewhat of a consistent schedule. I am recovering from a string of four night shifts. I'm feeling a little dazed and confused, actually. This morning I showed up for an eye ...

Editor's Note: Joe Weber, our prolific technology blogger, has penned a thorough (and, we think, hilarious) review of Apple's new iPad tablet. Because of its length, the review will be broken into eight parts, which we began to post last Friday. The remaining four posts will be published today. On Tuesday, we will publish the entire review as ...

Editor's Note: Joe Weber, our prolific technology blogger, has penned a thorough (and, we think, hilarious) review of Apple's new iPad tablet. Because of its length, the review will be broken into eight parts, which we began to post last Friday. The remaining four posts will be published today. On Tuesday, we will publish the entire review as ...

Editor's Note: Joe Weber, our prolific technology blogger, has penned a thorough (and, we think, hilarious) review of Apple's new iPad tablet. Because of its length, the review will be broken into eight parts, which we began to post last Friday. The remaining four posts will be published today. On Tuesday, we will publish the entire review as ...