{"id":11872,"date":"2018-03-13T10:48:27","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T17:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/medex\/?p=11872"},"modified":"2018-03-13T10:48:27","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T17:48:27","slug":"its-really-about-practicing-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/its-really-about-practicing-people\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Really About Practicing People"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcap\">A<\/span><strong><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\">s a child growing up<\/span><\/strong> in the country of Oman, Aparna Lakshman was fascinated by the doctor who treated her recurring colds and ear infections.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis person just cured me,\u201d Aparna says, still with a sense of wonder in her voice. \u201cBut he did it in such a way that I never felt intimidated. And that&#8217;s something that sparked an interest. I&#8217;m like, \u2018Wow, not only is he, like, making me feel better, but he actually makes me feel better as a person too. He doesn&#8217;t treat me like a sick person, he treats me with loving, tender care.\u2019 That&#8217;s something that always stayed in my head.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Aparna Lakshman: MEDEX Seattle Class 50\" width=\"1020\" height=\"574\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xaDG639Rg3A?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Aparna was born in India but spent the first 18 years of her life in Oman, years marked by yearly vacations back to India. She was educated in a private Indian school in Oman. \u201cThere\u2019s a huge Indian population there,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>But regular access to medical services proved challenging where she grew up in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere were hardly any medical professionals. I remember my parents taking me to a local Omani clinic for well child checkups and injections. At the time the large hospitals didn&#8217;t have translators, and I watched my parents struggle. We had to find an Indian doctor and travel to them so that my parents could understand.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">T<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\"><strong>here is no history<\/strong><\/span> of immediate medical professionals in Aparna\u2019s family. And yet, for as long as she can remember, Aparna was drawn to medicine. \u201cMy favorite toy was the little doctor kit with the stethoscope and the fake otoscope,\u201d she says. \u201cNo one told me that I had to become a medical professional. It was just in me. I just felt like that&#8217;s what I was supposed to do in a professional realm\u2013 help others. Not only help, but relate to patients in a way that they don&#8217;t get from other people.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>[smartslider3 slider=157]<\/div>\n<p>Initially, Aparna considered nursing, then shifted her focus to medical school. \u201cI wanted to be a physician for the longest time,\u201d she says.<br \/>\nHigh school in Oman ended at age 16, and Aparna was a year into college when the family decided to relocate geographically.<\/p>\n<p>Aparna\u2019s father worked for the U.S. Embassy in Oman. After 23 years of service with the U.S. State Department, Aparna\u2019s father qualified for a Special Immigrant Visa. It\u2019s a privilege that would give him and the family permanent residence in the United States. \u201cSo, my dad quit his nice job and we had to uproot our lives and start from scratch,\u201d Aparna explains. All this at age 18.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was my mom, my younger sister, and my dad and me. We filled luggage with our hopes and dreams, squeezed in with all our clothes. That&#8217;s all we had.\u201d The family moved to Kent, the new home for many immigrants within Washington State. \u201cMy dad knew someone in that area,\u201d she says. \u201cSo that&#8217;s why we started in Kent. We rented an apartment, and we&#8217;ve been there ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There were struggles at first, but Mr. Lakshman was able to get back in the workforce quickly. But with the rise in costs by coming to America, his salary wasn\u2019t quite enough to support the family of four. At that time, Aparna\u2019s mother had never worked in her life. She had married young and not gone to school since marriage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNobody ever encouraged her to find her own identity,\u201d says Aparna. She pushed her mother to go back to school. \u201cAnd that&#8217;s something I take so much pride in.\u201d Her mother\u2019s English improved. \u201cI saw her grow as a person. Now she\u2019s a preschool teacher. She feels so much better and is earning an income. She says, \u2018It&#8217;s my money? My own money? I can do anything with it?\u2019 I&#8217;m like, \u2018Yeah, mom, it&#8217;s <em>your<\/em> money.\u2019 The transformation in her has been such a delight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">A<\/span><strong><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\">parna\u2019s own path to education<\/span><\/strong> in the US began at Bellevue Community College soon after her arrival at age 18. There, she obtained the prerequisites needed for a transfer to the University of Washington, where she was fully committed to the premed path and a future as doctor.<\/p>\n<p>Close to the end of her senior year at UW, Aparna was taking the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test) and working on her applications for medical school. \u201cI did all of that,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I never completed it. I was kind of hard on myself. But now, looking back, I can see it was the best decision because I have a better future ahead of me as a PA.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>[smartslider3 slider=159]<\/div>\n<p>Aparna\u2019s understanding of the physician assistant profession traced back to her undergraduate life. She received a global scholarship to study abroad and went to India for a quarter. Her roommate was a PA from New Jersey who was in her clinical year at the time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe really took the time to explain to me, \u2018This is what a PA does.\u2019 She was studying for her PANCE at that time. I remember looking at her PANCE book thinking, \u2018This looks a lot like medical school.\u2019. I wasn&#8217;t sure what they did, because I was of the notion that maybe their scope of practice was much narrower.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Turns out the opposite was true. Unlike an MD, a PA isn\u2019t locked into one area of medicine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you&#8217;re a cardiologist, that\u2019s what you are. It&#8217;s so hard to change residencies; you&#8217;re set on one field. With physician assistant, I saw the opportunities are almost endless. You have a long time to do things. You can change fields. And there&#8217;s so many opportunities out there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">I<\/span><strong><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\">n order to get into PA school<\/span><\/strong>, Aparna had to log a certain number of patient contact hours. She got her medical assisting license and started at a retina clinic in Federal Way. This was followed by three years at bariatric clinic under Dr. Thien Nguyen.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_11898\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11898\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/medex\/wp-content\/uploads\/Vert2-Lakshman.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11898\" src=\"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/medex\/wp-content\/uploads\/Vert2-Lakshman-400x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"600\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-11898\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aparna Lakshman with her sister in 2011 at her UW undergraduate degree ceremony.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThere was a lot of patient interaction,\u2019 she says. More than that, Dr. Nguyen afforded Aparna the opportunity to put into practice everything she\u2019d learned in premed. This included a lot of back and forth, with discussion about patient care and needs, providing her with a strong foundation for PA school.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, Aparna clocked over 4,000 hours of patient contact as a medical assistant. MEDEX requires 2,000. At the bariatric clinic Aparna had become acquainted with several MEDEX PA students who came through on one-month surgical rotations under Dr. Nguyen. She\u2019d seen their competence, and the respect the providers afforded them.<\/p>\n<p>Initially, Aparna applied to MEDEX Northwest in 2014, even though it was late in the application season and her prerequisites were not entirely in order. During the second application round in 2015, Aparna expanded to include several other PA schools and was invited to five interviews. But when the University of Washington-based MEDEX Northwest program granted her an interview, she felt a sense of relief and excitement. \u201cIt was like, \u2018All the lords have heard my prayers. This is the moment I&#8217;ve been waiting for all my life.\u2019 I didn&#8217;t think twice, went for the interview, tried my best and got in. \u00a0That was the happiest day of my life. Finally, I got some control over my future. Now I know where I&#8217;m going, and I&#8217;m doing a positive change in my life. It all just came together.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The first year of the two-year program is spent in the classroom. Aparna describes the didactic year as a rough one. \u201cRough in the sense of the content and the acceleration of the program,\u201d she says. \u201cIt&#8217;s from zero to 100, really quickly. So much information, so quick. I can&#8217;t believe I finished the didactic year and that thick book. I&#8217;m proud of myself that I made it through because it&#8217;s one of the hardest things I&#8217;ve done. But at the same time, I think it kind of tested me also. It was like, how much can I do? How can I hold this amount of stress? But, you know, I came out sane, which I think is a victory by itself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>About her cohorts from MEDEX Seattle Class 50, Aparna has found them to be down-to-earth. \u201cI can reach out to any of my classmates, at any time, and know they will somehow, in some way, help me. We have ER techs, paramedics, MAs and a pharmacist in our class. I&#8217;m able to tap into each of them for their own expertise. I really like that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">P<\/span><strong><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\">resently in her clinical year<\/span><\/strong>, Aparna is in her 4-month family medicine preceptorship at Eastside Primary Care and Wellness under Michael Corsilles, ND, PA-C. Himself a MEDEX graduate of MEDEX Seattle Class 42 from 2010, Dr. Corsilles has the distinction of being both a physician assistant and a naturopath.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe has such a tender heart,\u201d says Aparna, speaking of Dr. Corsilles. \u201cI feel like we have more of a friendship because he&#8217;s just so open, and we joke. If I make mistakes, I can make them openly. And that is something I&#8217;ve considered to be very important. He&#8217;s very gentle about correcting me and giving good feedback. This clinic has been amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>[smartslider3 slider=158]<\/div>\n<p>Aparna has six additional one-month rotations before she graduates in August of 2018, including one at Harborview in behavioral medicine and inpatient medicine with the bone marrow transplant unit at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.<\/p>\n<p>As for the future, Aparna imagines starting off her career as a physician assistant in family medicine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know that for sure. I definitely want a nice foundation for my education. I know it&#8217;s a steep learning curve, but it\u2019s a good base. People say, \u2018Primary care, it&#8217;s always coughs and colds.\u2019 But for me every person is so different. This person\u2019s cough is not the same as the other person&#8217;s cough. And in family medicine, you really get to know the person you\u2019re treating. You see them annually, you manage their diabetes, and you manage their hypertension. Somehow, that just excites me. It really does.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s clear that Aparna enjoys patient feedback. She speaks about the power of interaction, of inspiring confidence by listening to and helping the patient, especially if they\u2019re in pain. Perhaps this echoes back to her earliest experience as a child with a doctor in Oman.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI really look forward to being a good provider,\u201d she says. \u201cIt doesn&#8217;t matter how I did on a test. At the end of the day, it&#8217;s not just practicing medicine, it&#8217;s really about practicing people. I say \u2018practicing people\u2019 because it&#8217;s the patient skills that matter. How can I help them, and how can I make their day better?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aparna Lakshman has definite ideas about her role as a future physician assistant. Influenced by a childhood healthcare experience in Oman, she sees close patient interaction as central to her mission. All evidence suggests a strong career ahead in family medicine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clinical-experience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}