After many weeks of reposts and lack of content, we are back. It’s been a crazy few weeks as we assimilate back into classes and reorganize (and expand) our team. But we are ready to provide you all with fascinating stories centralized around various healthcare workers!
Today, I want to introduce Victoria Ho, a third-year PA student at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut. Victoria is in her clinical year of PA school and intends on graduating in December. She recently won an award from the American Academy of Physicians Assistants for being the PA Student of the Year.
Like many healthcare workers, Victoria’s medical journey began when she was very young. “My parents are both immigrants to the United States. My grandparents don’t speak a lick of English, and they still managed to get by and everything. I remember growing up and going to my grandparents’ doctor’s appointments to help translate and being like, ‘What is this?’ I remember being five and questioning, ‘What does this do? What does that do?’ And then having to translate back to my grandfather… I’ve always been very curious about it. I think of medicine a lot like a puzzle piece. You never can really see the entire picture unless you get all of the pieces together… I feel like there’s always more than just what’s on the surface of your patients.” Victoria believes a lot of her scientific curiosity was sparked when she was a young girl translating for her grandparents.
When Victoria began her undergraduate degree at the University of Connecticut, she worked as a volunteer EMT. The experiences she gained from her work as a volunteer EMT drove her closer and closer to pursuing medicine. However, Victoria was torn between the pre-med and the pre-PA paths. Victoria knew she enjoyed science and wanted to help people, but was uncertain of the route she wanted to go. When she began her junior year, she did an internship that inspired her and pushed her towards the pre-PA route. Victoria really enjoyed the flexibility to pursue any specialty she desired. She also loved that she could become an expert in her “scope of interest”, and if she wanted to switch routes and learn about something else, she could. Victoria graduated in 2016 with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a minor in Psychology.
Before pursuing PA school, Victoria took a two-and-a-half-year gap. During this time, she worked in Hartford, Connecticut as an ER Tech, before moving to Boston to work as a Clinical Research Coordinator for a neuromodulation laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital. She was then accepted into PA school and moved back to Connecticut. In retrospect, Victoria is incredibly happy she chose to take a gap. This time allowed her to advance her interests and understanding of the medical field, as well as solidify her interest in it.
Victoria acknowledges that she has faced quite a few challenges in PA school. Largely, the most difficult part has been her clinical year. “The biggest thing for the clinical year is just the learning curve. In a didactic year, we learn textbook medicine… When you go into the real world, no patient is going to be like, ‘These are my symptoms’, and list them off one by one. I think the hardest part was formulating questions to get the answers needed.” During the clinical year, too, work-life balance is entirely dependent on the site you’re at. Some students are required to work a variety of shifts at different sites, which is very strenuous. These shifts consume your life and decide your schedule, as they are inconsistent. Other sites, such as outpatient, are more steady and alongside the 8 AM-5 PM schedule. Generally, Victoria works 9 AM-5 PM or 8 AM-6 PM.
Another obstacle Victoria mentioned was working with such a variety of people. “Some patients are very cooperative. They’ll answer all of your questions. While others are rolling around in pain and can only give you one or two answers and you still have to figure it out.” This challenged Victoria after her didactic year. She had to focus on ways to formulate questions to obtain the answers she needed to assess the situation.
Along the way, Victoria has had plenty of mentors. All of Victoria’s role models have taught various lessons and instilled within her crucial knowledge to shape her into the person she is today. “One of my mentors got me into shadowing and things like that with other PAs in different departments. Her entire career started off in general surgery, then OB/GYN, then trauma, then ER, and I was like, ‘That is amazing. You can cover so much.’ And she’s fairly young.”
As for advice Victoria has for students?
“Usually what I tell people who are also on the fence [between med school and PA school] is that if they need to, take a year off. Take a year. See, what you really, really enjoy without having school to influence you. I took about two and a half years off between undergrad and grad school, mainly to work and to get my hours and to save, but also for me to understand the medical field. Med school is very different than PA school in the amount of time, the length, and also the profession. With my two and a half years off, I still continued to accumulate patient contact hours.” Victoria shadowed a variety of professions during her two and a half years off. This allowed her to fully decide she wanted to go to PA school.
“I feel like society wants you to rush into a career right away, which is a little hard because the MD path is very long. My advice is if you're really on the fence, it doesn't hurt to take a year off. Work, save some money, enjoy life and medical experience, and then that will help you decide which path to choose, because this path may be the path that you're going to choose for the next 40 something years as a career. What harm is one year trying to figure out what you want to do?”
“Your path is for you, so you make it how it is.”
Out of curiosity, we decided to ask Victoria what a day in her life looks like. Here was her response:
“There's a set number of core rotations we have to do. I'm currently in my general surgery rotation, and each site varies depending on where you are. But a typical day for me right now is that I wake up around 4:30 in the morning. I look at charts; I look at my list of patients. I have access to do this at home, so I still do it in my bed in the morning, which is a little better. And I go through the charts and make sure there were no acute episodes that happened overnight, make sure their morning labs are fine and vital signs are fine, and then I usually leave around 5:45 in the morning. My site has lectures in the morning for students, so we go to lectures from 6:30 to 7:30. Lectures are on a variety of different topics ranging from presentations, simulations, or procedures.. Then usually around 7:30, if you're assigned to OR cases, you go to your OR cases depending on what/when they are throughout the day. If not, you're on the floor, so then you round on all of your patients with your team. Throughout the day, you manage your patients, and depending on if they need imaging, need to go back to the OR, or if they’re getting discharged, you spend time on the floor. That’s typical until 4:30 for me, and then usually once a week we have a 24-hour shift. So we just camp out in the hospital. We cover all of the services at night. That includes ICU, trauma, our general surgery team, orthopedics, and OB/GYN as well. Usually, they’re pretty quiet throughout the night… For us, we're always with the team… We're never alone. In my sub-specialty team, we have usually four to five surgeons we work closely with. The team is usually made up of PA students, med students, residents, and a PA staff member. The surgical department, which is where I am, is mainly PA-run. The hospital also has a PA residency program, which does most of their training here.”
In her free time, Victoria is involved heavily in advocacy and different organizations. Victoria was one of the LBGT-PA Caucus (@lbgtpacaucus on Instagram) student leader fellowship recipients for 2020 into 2021. That ended in July, and Victoria is currently a director-at-large board member. Her fellowship was meant for advocating and teaching others how to advocate for the community. This July, she became one of the directors at large for the organization. “That was one of the biggest and best experiences of my PA schooling.”
Victoria is also a part of the GLMA Health Profession in training and has spoken as one of the panelists there. She is also a part of the African Heritage PA Caucus, where she has collaborated on advocating for a bill that protects black maternal mothers.
This past March, Victoria went to AAPA’s Leadership and Advocacy Summit (@aapaorg on Instagram). Typically, they go each year and speak with different state representatives on bills that pertain to the PA profession. This year, there was a bill advocating for PAs to be able to prescribe diabetic shoes to Medicare patients, and another to “do a referral for a patient who's on Medicare for cardiac and pulmonary rehab”.
We’re so grateful for Victoria’s time and for all of the work she does for various communities. Her story and her advocacy are both informational and inspiring, and we hope students can gain knowledge and inspiration from her. If you’d like to learn more, feel free to follow Victoria at @vho2012.
Best! EF
Vital Voices Admin