{"id":8669,"date":"2016-05-24T09:51:07","date_gmt":"2016-05-24T16:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/medex\/?p=8669"},"modified":"2016-05-24T09:51:07","modified_gmt":"2016-05-24T16:51:07","slug":"a-dedication-to-our-country-and-our-profession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/a-dedication-to-our-country-and-our-profession\/","title":{"rendered":"A Dedication To Our Country And Our Profession"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AAPA-VeteransCaucus-Logo\"James Chally, a member of MEDEX Seattle Class 49, has been awarded the SSgt Craig Ivory Memorial Scholarship\/ Veterans Caucus Scholarship<\/em> by the Veterans Caucus of the American Association of Physician Assistants (AAPA). Approaching its 25th<\/sup> anniversary, the AAPA\u2019s Veterans Caucus mission is to support veterans \u201cthrough service, education, and fraternity.\u201d This mission includes the goal of \u201csupporting the educational pursuits of veterans in physician assistant programs through the awarding of scholarships.\u201d<\/p>\n

The SSgt Craig Ivory Memorial Scholarship<\/em> is one of twelve that were offered during the 2015-16 award cycle, and is provided by Pat and Terri Ivory to honor the memory of their son, Craig, an Army medic who died in Iraq. The award certificate reads: \u201cIn recognition of your academic achievement, outstanding service, commitment and dedication to our country and our profession.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAwarding James Chally this scholarship truly upholds the standard of the Caucus\u2019s mission,\u201d say Gino Gianola, a Senior Lecturer on the MEDEX Seattle faculty and the treasurer of the Veterans Caucus.\u00a0\u201cHe is a real leader, both in academic achievement and in serving as a role model for his class, for other students, and for other veterans. I am very proud of James as the recipient of this scholarship.<\/p>\n

\"MEDEX
MEDEX Northwest Program Director Terry Scott presenting the AAPA Veterans Caucus Award certificate to 2015-16 recipient James Chally.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If the name James Chally sounds familiar to you, it might be because we only recently shared the news<\/a><\/strong> from the University of Washington that James had won a \u201cHusky 100 Award.\u201d Or perhaps it\u2019s because we \u00a0featured James<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0back in June 2015, on the occasion of his being chosen as a Tillman Scholar by the Pat Tillman Foundation. Or it might simply be that he\u2019s the kind of student and classmate that people inevitably talk about: class president for MEDEX Seattle Class 49, Special Forces Medical Sergeant with the Washington National Guard, devoted husband and father to a young daughter, and, by all accounts, one heck of a nice guy.<\/p>\n

Before deciding to become a physician assistant, Chally served some nine years of active duty as an Army medic, most of that with Special Forces. \u201cThe training for that was about two years of my career,\u201d he explains. \u201cThen I spent four good years working with a team that did deployments to Afghanistan. We spent about a year in Kunduz Province, and another 9-10 months in Paktika and Ghazni Provinces. That was mainly working with locals, training local Afghan police forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also did some training in Southeast Asia predominantly,\u201d Chally continues. \u201cThailand and Indonesia and Singapore. This is where we train the host nation government forces and police forces. It\u2019s a joint training, so they\u2019ll give us training as well in some of their SOPs and things that they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

[smartslider3 slider=39]<\/div>\n

On top of everything else going on for James Chally these days, he is also working with another student \u2013 a veteran and a PA student like himself, though not with MEDEX \u2013 on a project designed to help make prospective PA students coming out of the military more competitive in the application process.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are putting together a proposal for the AAPA (American Association of Physician Assistants) to create a guide of some sort, something that makes clear what an Army medic does, or what a Navy corpsman does, so that people who are reviewing applications or doing the interviewing, but who maybe aren\u2019t familiar with these backgrounds, can get a better understanding of the types of training that the applicants already have, and of the experience that they bring to the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me and Special Operations, for instance,\u201d he continues, \u201cour training is a year long, so we do a full six months of nothing but trauma training, and that encompasses quite a bit. Then we spend another six months just doing clinical training, diagnosing and developing differentials. A lot of medics, they operate on their own in austere environments, and bring more to the table than most people realize. I want to give people a better understanding of that experience, so that in the future, hopefully, more veterans will get into more programs. That\u2019s the ultimate goal.”<\/p>\n

A<\/span> <\/strong>lot of medics, they operate on their own in austere environments, and bring more to the table than most people realize. I\u00a0want to give people a better understanding of that experience, so that in the future, hopefully, more veterans will get into more programs. That\u2019s the ultimate goal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the meantime, though, as he completes his first year of coursework as a MEDEX student, and anticipates year two\u2019s clinical rotations throughout the region, James Chally is considering what he and his young family might do with the generous Veterans Caucus scholarship award.\u201cWell, I think we\u2019ll go out to eat first. Then we\u2019ll buy some diapers and pay some bills. This award is very helpful, and very nice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Chally, a member of MEDEX Seattle Class 49, has been honored yet again for his hard work and service both as an Army medic and as a MEDEX student. Chosen earlier in the school year as a Pat Tillman Scholar, and more recently given a UW Husky 100 Award, Chally has just received the SSgt. Craig Ivory Memorial Scholarship\/ Veterans Caucus Scholarship from the Veterans Caucus of the American Association of Physician Assistants (AAPA). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8693,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8669","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=8669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8669\/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=8669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familymedicine.uw.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}