Day in the Life
Physician Assistant
Hey y’all! My name is Dawson Faynan, and I am a first-year Physician Assistant (PA) Studies student here at Salus University.
It’s hard to describe what a typical day looks like as a PA student here at Salus because it can vary quite a bit, but Thursdays tend to be pretty consistent. This Thursday, our first class started at 9:00 a.m., so I treated myself with an extra hour of sleep and woke up at 8:00 a.m. I then made myself a cup of coffee, had some yogurt with blueberries and headed off to class at 8:45 a.m. I live right down the street from the University which really comes in handy since we spend a majority of our time at the University during our first-year.
We spent the next two hours learning about the pathophysiology of the adrenal glands, and how they function within the endocrine system. After that, the class splits into eight smaller groups for our physical diagnosis class, four of which have class from 12 to 2:30 p.m, while the other four groups go from 2:30 to 5 p.m. The earlier group usually heads to the cafe, but since I’m in the latter group, I took the extra time to head to the Haftner Center to workout. I finished around 1 p.m. and decided to run home to shower and eat before heading back to class. Today, we had our pulmonary workshop where we spent the first hour or so talking about pulmonary conditions, how they may present, and what questions we should ask when eliciting a history. During the next hour we split off into pairs to perform a mock patient encounter. We then ended our session by debriefing our faculty and other students about the condition we had, how we diagnosed it, and what treatments we prescribed.
After that I went home around 5 p.m. to make dinner before heading back to the library to study. I don’t study well at home, and I tend to study better in groups so I usually spend the rest of my evenings at the Learning Resource Center with some of the other PA students. After studying for the rest of the night, I packed up my things and left the library at 11:15 p.m. and spent the next hour or so winding down and getting ready for the next day!
