As part of the Rural Health Immersion program at River Hospital in Alexandria Bay, six Wells College students participated in a scavenger hunt throughout the River Community in upstate New York. The students explored participating community organizations through this fun “get-to-know-the-community” activity.
Similar to how the Amazing Race on CBS is conducted, students were given clues and had to find their way to specific locations based on the clues. At each of these locations, an agency representative greeted the students, participated in an interview, and then provided the students with an envelope containing the clue to their next location. This activity provided the students with the chance to interview community members, learn about different services their agency provides, and their unique perspectives on living in a rural community.
If you want to learn everything about the human body, and use that knowledge to help diagnose and treat patients, then you should think about becoming a physician assistant! Also known as a PA, physician assistants practice medicine on a team supervised by doctors and surgeons. They are able to examine patients, diagnose injuries and illnesses, and treat the patients, which includes prescribing medications. Physician assistants can work in a variety of environments, ranging from small offices to hospitals to urgent care. In a rural setting, a PA might act as a primary care “physician,” and confer with their supervising doctor as the law requires.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, physician assistants held about 86,700 jobs in 2012. By 2022, this number is expected to increase by 38%, which is much faster than the average career. There will be an increased need for healthcare professionals, for reasons including a growing population and increased chronic disease. In 2012, the median pay of a physician assistant was $90,930 per year, and it’s likely to increase every year.
In order to become a PA, one must receive a Master’s degree from a nationally accredited PA program. There are 170 schools in the US that offer these programs. These programs require up to 1,000 hours of direct patient contact that can come in the form of an emergency medical technician, certified nursing assistant, or other healthcare jobs. Schools like to see people with experience, people who know for sure that they want to work in the healthcare field.
It typically takes about 2 years to obtain a Master’s degree from PA school. The first year is usually classroom-based, while the second year is full of clinical rotations in various fields. From this, you’ll be able to get an idea of what specialty you would like to choose. Luckily, you can switch specialties throughout your career! These specialties include surgery, cardiac, family medicine, emergency medicine and pediatrics. To keep up with the always changing medical field, PAs must have 100 hours of continued education every 2 years, and will be required to retake a certification exam every 10 years.
Personally, I am on track to become a physician assistant and I can’t wait to start my career as one. Going into college, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew that I loved science, but I was unsure of what careers were available. I started doing internships in the medical field, including one with an orthopedic surgeon, and I learned that I definitely wanted to be a healthcare professional. Still, I didn’t know what exactly I wanted to do. I spent time interviewing doctors, PAs, medical students, PA students, and even nurses. The one big thing I learned was that every single PA I spoke with absolutely LOVES their career. They wouldn’t change a thing about it. I wanted to have that passion for my career, and I wanted to love going into work every day, so the summer before my senior year I officially decided that I would attend PA school. In order to get my patient contact hours, I am currently taking an EMT class and will most likely take 2 years off before I pursue my Master’s degree. I am enjoying taking this EMT class, and I’m glad to be learning new things that will help me in my career as a PA.
The Central New York Area Health Education Center (CNYAHEC) recently announced John Paliakkara as the recipient of this year’s L. Thomas Wolff Scholarship. John, an undergraduate student in the SUNY Potsdam Rural Medical Program, aspires to become a physician. The competitive annual award is available to past CNYAHEC program participants who are entering into a clinical health professions program.
“I’m pleased to congratulate John on being selected as this year’s L. Thomas Wolff, M.D. Scholarship recipient,” said Richard Merchant, CEO of CNYAHEC. “This honor is a reflection of Dr. Wolff’s spirit, integrity, and dedication to providing care to those most in need. All of us at CNYAHEC are proud to support outstanding students, like John, on their paths to become our future healthcare providers.”
John is a former MedQuest Health Careers Exploration Camp participant. MedQuest, sponsored by SUNY Upstate Medical University and CNYAHEC, is a resident summer camp offering a week of hands-on activities, interactive workshops, and classes to introduce high school students to a variety of health career opportunities. CNYAHEC and SUNY Upstate Medical University have partnered for more than a decade to bring the popular and highly competitive program to area high school students. Last year, nearly 300 students applied for one of the 25 program openings.
“Experiential programs like MedQuest are key to engaging local students who are interested in pursuing a career in the health professions,” said Donna Vavonese, Director of Admissions at SUNY Upstate Medical Center. “Students have the opportunity to understand why it takes a team effort to provide quality patient care. They also learn how medicine is more than science — there is a human relationship component, as well. Through the MedQuest program, CNYAHEC and Upstate provide an excellent opportunity for students who wish to learn more about the many opportunities in health care.”
As an expression of gratitude, CNYAHEC established the L. Thomas Wolff Scholarship in 2014 to honor Dr. Wolff, a long-time local family physician and co-founder of the New York State Area Health Education Center (AHEC) System. Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. Wolff has been an active presence among local, state and national professional organizations. Most notably, he served as president of both the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine and the American Board of Family Medicine. Dr. Wolff is currently a Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Physician Assistant (PA) program at SUNY Upstate Medical Center, where he served as the Chair of the Department of Family Medicine for twelve years.
The L. Thomas Wolff, M.D. Scholarship is possible because of generous gifts from our community supporters. For more information regarding the L. Thomas Wolff Scholarship, or to make a tax deductible donation, please contact the CNYAHEC office at (607) 756-1090 or info@cnyahec.org.
SBIRT (Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment) is an evidence-based approach to identifying risky substance use in patients. This 8-hour training, when completed after the 4-hour initial SBIRT training, meets the 12-hour requirement for non-licensed professionals.
Prerequisite: SBIRT 4-Hour Training Date: August 6, 2015 Time: 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (8 hours) Location: Transitional Living Services of Northern New York, 482 Black River Parkway, Watertown NY 13601 Cost: None
Do you like helping others? Are you interested in health and wellness? Consider becoming a medical assistant and make a difference in the lives of others!
Mohawk Valley Community College (Utica, NY) offers a Medical Assistant Certificate, which can typically be completed in three semesters (Fall, Spring, Summer). You will learn about medical terminology, professional standards in healthcare, clinical procedures, healthcare law, and much more. Upon completion, Medical Assistants will assist nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals by performing routine procedures (e.g. blood pressure/pulse/respiration/weight) and laboratory tests, billing insurance providers, scheduling appointments, filing, and other reception duties in a medical office setting.
If you are interested in this rewarding career path, please visit http://www.mvcc.edu or call 315-792-5305 and ask for Gail Warchol. Mohawk Valley Community College also offers non credit healthcare classes, including Certified Nursing Aide, Home Health Aide, Personal Care Assistant, Pharmacy Technician, and Phlebotomy through the Corporate & Community Education Department (CCED).
Crouse Community Center is a 120-bed rural nursing home and rehabilitation center located less than a mile from the village center of Morrisville, NY. The facility backs up to rolling farmland and looks out on the SUNY Morrisville campus. The single floor building includes six wings with a series of courtyards and patios, which are visible from resident rooms. The non-profit organization is certified by the New York State Department of Health.
Challenges
Crouse Community Center is required to provide annual mandatory compliance training to approximately 210 staff members. I spoke with Patty Venette, RN, BSN, RAC-CT, SAFE, and Director of Education, Employee Health and Infection Control at the center about her compliance training process. Until last year, Crouse Community Center’s in-service training was done face-to-face and documented by paper sign-in sheets and paper quizzes. As many as 20 people from different departments might attend one training, with all that attendance information needing to be manually entered into an Excel spreadsheet. Venette then had to sort the data by department in order to record participation and create reports. The paper-based process was cumbersome, time consuming, and difficult to manage—challenges that were highlighted when Venette prepared staff evaluations. This prompted her and other members of the management team to look for an online training solution.
The Solution
After careful consideration, the organization chose InService Solutions for its tracking, reporting, and customization capabilities. One of the major benefits of InService Solutions, Venette explained, is the ability to customize courses. She is currently working on content for an “Active Shooter” scenario module, which will link to an informational video on a government website. As part of the module development, Venette asked the local sheriff’s office to review their policies and procedures so they can be aware of the latest safety practices. The sheriffs’ office is also working with them on a walk-through of the center so they can get a better understanding of what to expect should an incident occur. The Active Shooter training will be an in-person training session reinforced by the online training available through InService Solutions.
Venette plans to combine the new content with their current Workplace Violence and Sexual Harassment modules on InService Solutions, turning three related topics into one module. The customization functionality of InService Solutions gives facilities like Crouse Community Center the flexibility to personalize training modules to meet their needs. We can’t wait to see where Crouse Community Center takes InService Solutions next.
Students in St. Lawrence County have an exciting opportunity to participate in P-TECH, a program designed to prepare students for high potential health careers. Informed by current and projected industry trends, students take part in a rigorous, relevant and cost-free 4-6 year education sequence focused on building the knowledge and skills they need to have to be successful in their chosen career goals. Mentoring, workplace visits, job shadowing, and internships are integrated into each student’s P-TECH School experience. Engaged employer partners commit to ensuring that graduates are experienced enough in their chosen field to be considered “first in line” for jobs.
P-TECH is a collaborative effort among St. Lawrence-Lewis BOCES, HWNY, and employer partners. As a major contributor to the P-TECH School’s creation and implementation, HWNY has been instrumental in the development of a Skills Map that will ensure that students graduate with the entry-level skills that employers need. We could not be more excited to be a part of this process and are looking forward to the many future health care employees influenced by this program!
For more information on P-TECH, please contact Rachelle Romoda at (315) 386-4504 extension 10422 or visit the St. Lawrence-Lewis BOCES website.
Community Memorial, an acute care hospital located in Hamilton, New York, serves a population of 45,000 across 27 communities. This award-winning rural facility has been nationally recognized for its performance. The esteemed healthcare system provides primary care, sophisticated orthopedic surgery, same day surgeries, and a complete roster of diagnostic testing and ancillary services. Community Memorial Hospital employs over 300 persons.
Challenges
Amy Dennis, Infection Prevention Nurse and Nurse Educator at Community Memorial Hospital, spoke with me about compliance training at their organization. Around 2010, the organization began looking for an online solution for their annual mandatory compliance training. At that time, they were holding live compliance training sessions spread out over a few-weeks period, requiring staff to be away from their work at inconvenient times—a factor that sometimes kept them from attending the training altogether.
Solution: Online Compliance Training
Dennis and her team began to look for a way to make participation in the training easier for staff members, especially for those who are on call and can take advantage of the training during their down time. Management chose InService Solutions learning management system to deliver compliance training to employees. The transition was smooth, with staff picking up on the new training pretty quickly. Even staff members who have little or no computer skills were able to successfully use this system with minimal assistance from trainers. Community Memorial Hospital now has 16 customized courses available for staff compliance training, ranging from courses on Corporate Compliance, Emergency Preparedness, and Fire Safety to HIPAA, Infection Control, and Patient Safety, just to name a few. The courses are available online to staff members 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Flexible Reporting Tools
Before the online solution, staff took quizzes on paper which were kept on file to record participation in trainings. With InService Solutions, everything is recorded within the system and can be printed as a report. Dennis finds the reporting tools easy to use and informative. She is able to track staff grades and course completion, which simplifies the process of meeting accreditation requirements. Dennis can tell who took what courses and uses these reports to look for trends, like which topics may need reinforcement. InService Solutions is helping Community Memorial Hospital meet regulatory requirements proposed by both the Joint Commission and the Department of Health, and evidence of staff compliance is now available anytime with a few clicks.
For students interested in applying to medical school, a historical moment occurred on April 17, 2015: The first version of the “new” MCAT was administered that day! The “old” version of the MCAT has been around since 1991, so this was a pretty major change.
The new MCAT has 230 questions and takes about 7.5 hours to finish. There are four sections: Biology and Biochemistry, Chemistry and Physics, Psychology/Behavioral Health, and Verbal Reasoning. Scores range from 118-132 per section, or 472-528 overall.
It depends on what you mean by “have to,” but if you want to attend a medical school in the U.S. then yes, taking the MCAT is almost universal. The only places I know of that don’t look at MCAT scores are three Canadian medical schools (University of Ottawa, McMaster University, Northern Ontario School of Medicine), but they have their own highly selective criteria for getting in.
When should I take the MCAT?
If you are going straight from college to medical school, medical school applications through the AMCAS system are due in December of your senior year. However, most medical schools offer interviews on a rolling basis so it is strongly encouraged that you finish as many applications as possible during the summer before your senior year. Working backwards from that, most students aim to take the MCAT during junior year of college.
If you take the MCAT during spring semester of junior year and don’t score as well as you’d like, you could try again in the summer. It is also becoming more popular to take a “gap year” or two after college before applying to medical school, so if don’t feel ready to take the MCAT junior year, it’s okay to take an extra year to prepare for the test and the rest of your application.
How do I study for the MCAT?
The MCAT requires a lot of studying – probably more than you’ve studied for any other test in your life! The average MCAT test-taker spends over 300 hours preparing for the exam, so start early. You can’t cram this all into one week. From my experience taking the MCAT in 2010, here are some tips:
#1: Go to class! The best thing you can do to prepare for the MCAT is to pay attention during your high school and college courses. Outside study materials will be no help if you don’t have a solid foundation in biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, and physics on which to build. Other helpful classes include psychology, sociology, statistics, and biochemistry. Plan to take these during your first 2 years of college so that you then have time to review using MCAT-specific materials.
#2: Study using questions. Once you’ve taken the prerequisite classes, it’s much more efficient to do practice questions than to read lists and paragraphs of information until your eyes glaze over. Khan Academy has a large, FREE collection of passage-based questions you can check out. Kaplan and Princeton Review also sell question banks and test preparation books; I would recommend going to a bookstore to compare the two styles and see which fits you better.
#3: Use AAMC official MCAT preparation materials. Since the AAMC writes the test, it is good to at least look at the sample questions they offer, and even better, take a full length practice test a few weeks before the real one to get familiar with the format and see where you stand. Their “The Official Guide to the MCAT Exam” ($35) offers practice questions actually written by the test creators, and will offer valuable information on what to expect.
Little known fact: many public libraries actually have a section of “test preparation materials.” If you don’t want to buy the materials, see if your local library carries the MCAT guide and other books of practice questions. Sometimes you can also go into a larger bookstore and do test prep questions there if you don’t want to buy the book.
#4: Get a teacher. If you’ve exhausted all the free and AAMC materials, or if you prefer to be in a classroom with someone to guide your studying, consider a more personal approach. The two big test prep companies, Kaplan and Princeton Review, both offer group classes and private lessons. But if you just search “MCAT tutor” online, tons of other options appear too. This approach is more expensive than studying on your own, but many students find it a worthwhile investment.
My name is Lizzy and I am currently enrolled in the joint MD/MPH program at SUNY Upstate Medical University, which means that I plan to graduate in 2017 with a doctorate of medicine (MD) and a master of public health (MPH) degrees.
Everyone knows what an MD is, but what about this public health business? Studying public health is quickly becoming more popular because it looks at the health of a community, instead of just individuals.
For example, traditional medicine might think about obesity as “This one person is overweight. He needs to eat less and exercise more.” But public health looks at the fact that obesity rates are high for a whole city and asks “Do the grocery stores sell fresh food? Are the fruits and vegetables affordable? Do people feel safe walking outside? Are there designated bike lanes for people to ride to work?”
In other words, public health tries to look at the root causes of health for a community. I chose to take an extra year* of classes and learn about public health because I think it is important to be aware of the bigger picture.
While medical school training is very important for learning how to diagnose and treat disease, public health taught me to think about how factors like education, income, race, neighborhood environment, and health insurance also affect our well-being. And the experience has fully met my expectations: I’ve learned to consider problems from a new perspective, to look at the world differently, and have also gained practical experience in program planning and health research.
Here are 10 of the greatest things that public health has achieved in the last 100 years. With my MPH training, I hope to add to the list!
Recognizing that tobacco is a health hazard
Decreased heart attack and stroke-related deaths
Vaccines
Safer workplaces
Motor vehicle safety (Seat belts)
Control of infectious diseases (Hand washing)
Safer and healthier foods
Fluoridation of drinking water
Family planning
Healthier mothers and babies
If you are interested in helping others to live healthier lives or in making a difference in your community through health initiatives, you should consider a public health degree. For more information about the Central New York MPH program and to see what graduates are doing with their degrees, check out their YouTube channel:
*Most MPH programs are a 2-year graduate program and MD programs are usually 4 years long, but Upstate’s MD/MPH joint degree is letting me finish both in 5 years.
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