Speaker: Alec Williams
Introduce yourself (name/ PA program) and tell us about your student academy position. Why did you get involved in student leadership?
Alec Williams: Hi, my name is Alec Williams and I'm a PAS two at Quinnipiac University just started up clinical rotation. So we're having a great time. I also serve as the Chief delegate uh for the Student Academy. So in this position, I serve on the Student Academy's Board of Directors as well as serving as the lead delegate for the 32 Student Academy Delegates this year. As we go to the House of Delegates uh for the A AP A in Houston, Texas. Um The whole reason that I got involved in leadership uh in the P A profession through the A AP A is because the same reason I got involved in medicine and that's to make a positive impact on patients lives as great as it is to be the provider. Who's there one on one with the patient when you have the opportunity to be, to be a leader in the health care community. Uh As pas have the unique opportunity to do, it's important to take that leadership role. And I think that through the A AP A and through the work that we do, especially in the House of Delegates, I think that we have an opportunity to make a change and a positive impact on countless amount of patient lives through changing the profession for the better.
Why should PA students get involved with the PA profession? (e.g. AAPA, Student Academies) Share some easy ways students can get involved.
Alec Williams: I get it. I understand P A school is a lot. It can be a little overwhelming at times. It's like the classic saying, drinking from a fire hose, but it's super important to get involved as students because there's over 19,000 P A students across the country. That means over 19,000 future P A providers that are gonna be entering the workforce, which means that we're gonna be able to serve a lot greater population to our patients and be relied on a lot more by the health care community in order to do this. It's super important that we get ourselves involved in leadership and advocacy in any way possible. And as students, I know that a question that I usually get from peers is, well, how can I get involved? And it can be as simple as searching on the A ap a website, student involvement and volunteer opportunities constantly pop up ways to become elected into an A AP a student academy board position. Or if you want to join the House of Delegates or if you wanna be a local SAR for your school or just start up a student society, if you're school doesn't have one advocacy with a little A is huge in the A AP A and P A stands for patient advocates. So being involved in any way that you can and learning those skills, networking within your community and really putting yourself out there to say this is what A P A can do is super important. And it starts now with us as students.
What advice do you have for aspiring PA students (Pre-PAs)?
Alec Williams: For anyone who's aspiring P A student, your pre P A. Um Our backgrounds are very diverse and I think that's something that makes the P A profession pretty unique. Some of us were nurses before some of us were paramedics. Some of us were ed tech and some of us were in business administration in the health care community and decided that we wanted to come to the clinical side. That's the amazing part about being A P A is that there's a conglomerate and a collaboration between so many different people of so many walks of life. And that's what allows us to kind of have this unique opportunity in the health care team. But amongst all of those different backgrounds and ideas, it's so important. And my greatest advice to you is find your, why, why do you want to become a P A? Why? Why do you wanna go through P A school if you can do that? Not only is that gonna give you the guidance and the motivation when things start to get really difficult through school, but also when you're a clinician, it's gonna tell you how can I best impact the medical team. How can I best impact my patients? All of the opportunities will become endless if you can find your why and understand why you want to become a P A.
What advice do you have for PA students?
Alec Williams: My greatest advice to all of my P A peers and all the P A students out there. And it's definitely something that I had to deal with too because I have that type a personality is that it's ok to be wrong. It's ok to mess up. We students remember that, remember that you're, that you're a P A student if you're on clinical and you're having a really tough day. If people are grilling you with questions that you don't quite remember the answer to or if you have a really tough patient who comes in and you just don't seem to know what to do or say you fail a test. It's ok. We have such a strong support network and group of P A students across the country. Everyone's going through the same thing no matter who you are. And I think that's super important to remember is that we're not gonna get everything right, but that's ok as long as you constantly are working on it and constantly building off new information and new clinical experience and trying to get yourself a little bit better each day, then you're gonna become the best patient advocate and best clinician that you can be later on.
Why should aspiring and current students join AAPA? (e.g. What is your favorite membership benefit?)
Alec Williams: In P A school. We're very blessed to learn an entire foundational medical knowledge on patho phase infectious disease pharmacology. But because it's all so packed and so crammed P A school sometimes don't get to teach you the specialty stuff. What if you really wanted to learn about orthopedic surgery for an orthopedic surgeon who's been doing it for 20 years? Well, as an A AP A member, you have access to that, you have access to webinars that are constantly going on. Maybe you want to learn more about how to give injections. A AP A has webinars on how to do that new CME opportunities. And of course, as a student, my favorite thing and that I had no idea about until other people had told me is that we have a free hippo ed uh account and membership. And I think that's something that's super special and just being a member of the A AP A that's given to you, there's countless resources. If you go on to the A AP A website, they have an entire student section, maybe you don't know how to get involved. You don't know where to start. You can just is easy, type it into a AP A dot com. Go to the student section and volunteer options. Galore. You, you're able to network a ap A huddle is another favorite of mine. I've been able to connect with a few mentors on there otherwise I never would have known. It's, it's a very important opportunity for students to take advantage of because we're granted with national resources and they're all at our fingertips. You just have to utilize them.
