First-year students are now halfway through spring semester! The last 10 months have flown by, and to think we have a little over 4 months left of didactic is hard to believe. We finished our endocrine module and are gearing up to begin neurology, a much-anticipated module for many of my classmates! Although endocrine was a challenging unit, it was impactful how they incorporated a diabetic learning simulation. For one week, we were given kits with glucometers, test strips, lancets, and a bottle of tic-tacs (to simulate medications) and required to carry out the week as if we had diabetes. By having a hands-on learning approach to the module, we gained valuable experience of how difficult it is to manage your diet, blood sugars, and medication schedule. I appreciated the faculty stressing the importance of us understanding this disease inside and out.
Our cohort also participated in the annual MAPA Challenge Bowl, and I am excited to say that one of our very own first-year student teams won the competition! Congratulations to Ryan Deering, Karl Quickert and Alan Falkowski for their outstanding performance and receiving the golden stethoscope! The event was highly anticipated and exciting amidst finishing a heavy exam week. Our cohort had a blast participating, even though we had not yet covered modules such as neurology and women’s health which made for some interesting guesses to the questions.
Some other highlights from this semester have been our casting and splinting lab, as well as suturing pig’s feet and whole raw chickens. I know many of us found it to be a great stress reliever from studying to just sit at home with our suture pads and practice our simple interrupted sutures or vertical mattress sutures. Our cohort also completed first year clinical experience with one day in the clinic with our professor seeing patients! We were able to use all we have learned- incorporating HPIs, physical exams, and creating differential diagnoses. This was a very rewarding experience and was a great introduction to our clinical year.
Lisa Sullivan is the MAPA representative for Bethel University’s class of 2023. She completed her undergraduate studies at University of Northwestern – St. Paul in Minnesota, graduating in 2019 and studying biology. Prior to PA school, she worked as an emergency room technician at Fairview Ridges Hospital and as a clinical assistant at Twin Cities Orthopedics.
Hello from Bethel’s first- and second-year student reps! This update we will do in tandem as I (Hannah) will provide updates on the second-year class, while Lisa will write about her class. I’ll also be passing the torch to her to write updates from here on out!
Updates from Hannah: After a busy last semester of didactic, I was able to take a week off to do some travelling and relax before I started my first rotation in Internal Medicine. I have absolutely loved this rotation! I really enjoy being inpatient and have been given a lot of independence to round on my own patients, write H+Ps/consults/discharge summaries, and come up with treatment plans. If you had told me three weeks ago that a heart failure exacerbation would be a more “straightforward” patient for me I would have thought you were joking. I feel like a sponge just absorbing information and I’ve learned so much and gained so much confidence. It’s certainly been an adjustment working 9–10-hour days but I already enjoy it so much more than sitting in the classroom all day (sorry, Lisa). I have 3 more days at this site, take my EOR, and then will start my general surgery rotation the following week. I can’t believe this rotation is already almost over! I definitely think internal medicine/hospitalist positions are something I may consider down the road. However, I couldn’t be more excited for surgery- it’s something I’ve always found amazing, so I am super eager to experience it more.
Update from Lisa: First-year students are now a month into our fall semester! We completed our first semester over the summer which included anatomy, physiology and clinical exam skills and are now diving right into clinical medicine, research, pathophysiology, and so much more. We recently took our first clinical medicine module exam on HEENT and our first pharmacology exam, and we all made it through! While this semester has proven to be more intense than the summer, it feels so good to be able to apply our new knowledge to patient cases. One of our new classes, medical problem solving, presents us with a patient case each week, and we work as a team to determine the diagnosis and what the best treatment plan would be. While a challenging course, it has proven to be very rewarding.
In just the past four months, our cohort has gotten extremely close. PA school has a way of bringing classmates together on a whole new level as we bond over the late nights we spend studying for exams or the countless times we practice IVs and other skills on each other (with the direct supervision of our faculty of course). Our IV placement/local anesthesia lab was one of the best days! There was lots of laughter as many of us attempted IVs for the very first time, but we all did amazing. We are adjusting to our new schedules and more intense classes and are thankful for our amazing faculty who are supporting us every step of the way.
Two of our first-year students had the awesome opportunity to present at MAPA’s Fall CME Conference on complex cases in LGBTQ+ health. This was valuable experience for the two of them, and we are all proud of the work they put into researching their topics!
I am very excited to be our new MAPA student representative and am grateful for the opportunity to be more involved with this organization!
Lisa Sullivan is the MAPA representative for Bethel University’s class of 2023. She completed her undergraduate studies at University of Northwestern – St. Paul in Minnesota, graduating in 2019 and studying biology. Prior to PA school, she worked as an emergency room technician at Fairview Ridges Hospital and as a clinical assistant at Twin Cities Orthopedics.
I am writing this update as a second year PA student- which feels insane to say! Mid-May, my classmates and I wrapped up our first full year of school. It’s been an insane and wild ride but so fulfilling. This semester, we continued our hybrid model, but a majority of our education was done on campus. Our semester involved casting and splinting, suturing, biopsies and dermatology procedures, more x-ray reading, acute abdomen exams, diabetic exams, reviewing the neuro exam, ultrasound, and the art of delivering bad news. In our clinical medicine class, we covered dermatology, rheumatology, orthopedics, gastroenterology, endocrine, neurology, psych, and geriatrics. Whew! That was tiring just to type. It was more tiring to experience. Luckily, this semester was our longest (20 weeks!) and we are headed into a short 10-week summer semester to finish off didactic.
As I’d expected, orthopedics was my favorite unit this semester and continues to be my top interest heading into my last semester. I also really enjoyed learning to deliver bad news. I feel like this is something I have struggled with in the past, as I always want to make patients happy and make the visit so positive. This education helped me feel more comfortable discussing hard topics, and I know I will be more prepared when the time comes. Our class was also able to go into clinic with one of our professors this semester. It was definitely helpful to prepare for rotations and what it will feel like to be thrown into a room to do a full body exam on a whim. Being in the clinic always reminds me why I am going through the struggles of school- it is so worth it to finally talk with a patient and take care of them.
Another fun part of the semester was participating in the MAPA Quiz Bowl with my classmates Abbie and Mackenzie. We felt we did very well, but struggled with the neurology questions (which we were set to learn the next week!). I hope next year we can get a larger contingent of Bethel students participating! The online format, while not ideal, was super fun and made playing very accessible.
Our class is almost entirely vaccinated now, and with the mask mandates changing every minute it will be interesting to see how the summer semester plays out. For our first semester ever, we will be fully in-person. This summer we tackle women’s health, pediatrics, emergency medicine, and surgery- all units I am super excited for. Our freshly third year students will be continuing their rotations and aim to finish up in August, at which time we will start! I am so excited to experience life in the field and gain experience. We’re also very excited for our new first year students to start in June. I have been chatting with my mentee and preparing her for what is to come. I feel like this last year has gone so fast, yet I’ve learned so much. It’s absolutely crazy to think about and sometimes (most of the time) I’m not sure how I survived it. One year down, a year and 3 months to go!
