a day in the life as a physician assistant in family medicine | VLOG

[0:00]Welcome to a day in the life as a family medicine physician assistant. As you can tell here, I woke up exhausted. I think I got like six hours of sleep the night prior, but nonetheless, we had to get up. I typically wake up around 6:20. Well, let's be clear. My alarm goes off at 6:20. I think this day I rolled out of bed at like exactly 6:45. And then immediately make my coffee because it's the best part of my day, honestly. This gingerbread creamer I got it from Kroger. It is fire. So typically I just go right to the couch and watch YouTube. YouTube just makes me feel very like inspired and I don't know, I always just feel happier after watching those videos. And then on days when I feel especially tired or puffy, I like to ice roll. And this was my journal prompt for the day. So something I'm looking forward to, something I'm proud of, something productive to do today, something for self care for the day and then something I love about myself. So I filled this out and I also do the five minute daily journal. And then it's officially time to get ready. I would say I usually head into my bathroom around 7:15, 7:20. And this was the outfit of the day. I was actually pretty proud of this one. We do have to wear business casual Mondays through Thursdays. So I typically get most of my work clothes. I get a lot of questions about this. So I typically get most of my work clothes from Zara or H&M or Abercrombie. This sweater actually is from Madewell, which is also a really good option. So we just did some makeup. I kind of keep it nice and simple, just with some foundation, some blush, fill in my eyebrows and then some mascara. This might be a hot take, but I actually love looking presentable for work. Like I like having to pick a cute outfit and get ready for the day. And then I just packed up the lunch that I already had prepped and some water, grabbed my work bag and left. Good morning. It is my first time talking to you real time. Happy Thursday. I'm excited to take you guys through a true day in the life as a PA working eight to five. I I took you guys through my whole morning routine already. Sometimes I'm just too tired to speak in the morning. So I decided to just do like a little voice overlay, but now I feel energized. It's actually a little early. I usually leave about 10 minutes later than right now. It's 7:40 right now because we got the biggest snowfall last night and my car was covered in snow. And all morning the group chat has been blowing up saying that the roads are terrible. So I'm a little nervous. Luckily, I live super, super close to my office, but still I hate driving in snow. So we're going to put my little Bronco in winter mode. Let me do that right now. I'm going to take it nice and easy. My first patient is at 8:00, but it's a Tella visit, so that's nice too because they can kind of like wait online a little bit if I am running late. But yeah, I'm so excited about today. Um, I work 8:00 to 5:00 and then I'm actually getting dinner with a friend who also works in the Ean area. She works for Michigan State. So I'm getting dinner with her, which is going to be so fun. And then the Lions play tonight. It's a Thursday night football game, which is just really fun. So I feel like today is a good day to just take you guys through what life is like as a PA. And I'm going to try to be as like granular as I can. It's hard sometimes to film days in my life as we hate because I can't obviously film that much at work. Like literally at all. I just don't want to risk hippo violation or like literally anything and also the people that I work with don't need to be on camera. So that's what I'm thinking. We're going to have a good day. I'm excited. So I will talk to you guys when I talk to you. Okay, I actually could not get over the views from my drive. It was like a little winter wonderland. But work actually was really good. I feel like I had one of my better days today. I think my camera died from how cold it is. We made it to my little dinner spot that I mean my friend at. I'm very excited. I tried to like not eat so much today because I actually had horrible food. I had a donut because it was one of the MMA's birthday and then we had Olive Garden from like a med rep. Anyways, it doesn't matter. It's fun. Happy Thursday. I had a very good day at work today. I feel like I just felt very like secure and confident today and like for once knew felt like I knew what I was doing. There's days where I feel like that and then there's days where I'm like literally what is going on? That's life as a new grad. As you can imagine. But yeah, I think I saw a total of 10 patients. I picked up one of my coworker's patients at the end of the day because she was a little bit more busy than I was. So yeah, recently I've been doing my like standard as a patient every hour, but they've added on two to four time slots for me that day depending on what the complaint is like sick visits, simple stuff like a URI or maybe like a ADHD medication followup or like an anxiety med followup. So I'm sprinkling some of those in there and I am due to be going full-time in January. Basically 8:00 to 12:00, I saw my patients. I tried to finish all their notes while I'm there. And then we did the lunch where we saw the med rep. So we ate and stuff. I finished up maybe a chart or two then. And then 1:00 to 5:00, I continued seeing patients, finishing their notes. I have one note to finish tonight. That's just because the MA needed to get into her chart to add on all the medications and we can't both be in there at one time. So I was like, that's fine. You can just go in. I'll finish it up tonight. So that's that. I'm excited. So we're going to get some dinner and then go home, change, shower, decompress and then the Lions play at 8:30, which I'm excited to watch with my boyfriend. So yeah, this is a pretty good day. I'm having a good one. Dinner was so fun. It was actually with my childhood best friend, so we were laughing at the fact that we met up and got dinner right after our grown-up jobs. Lil S would be so proud. Came home to a clean apartment and then just started unloading my lunch from that day because I ended up not eating any of it because the rep came in. We are back home. I'm so happy to be laying on this couch right now. It is 6:58. I think we left dinner around 6:30, I think. Um, and then just right when I got home, I changed and showered just because that's the best feeling after a long work day. Yeah, so this is my chill time of the day. Typically, like I don't always go obviously go to dinner after work. So typically, right when I get home from work, I'll just chill for a little bit and then usually like Christian and I do dinner together, maybe cook together. Today, obviously, we don't need to cook. He already ate, so I'm going to chill until maybe like 8:00. And then I do have one patient chart that I need to finish from today that I want to do before the Lions game starts at 8:30. Fridays, I work half days, so 8:00 to 12:00. So I feel like Thursday nights, I sometimes let myself go to bed a little bit later because it's only a half day I need to get through tomorrow. So with the Lions game being on, I guess I'll see how long I last. I am sleepy, but I don't know, we'll see. Really try to like be in bed by 10:00, sleeping by 10:30, but like even last night I could not fall asleep for the life of me and I think I went to bed at probably 11:45 by the time I was asleep. So I felt that this morning. But something I've actually been trying to be very aware of with working. So back when I was a student and was doing PA school rotations, I was like during an 8:00 to 5:00 day, like feeling so fatigued. I like really struggled to get through my days. So many times I had to come home from my 8:00 to 5:00s and take like a nap. Like I was just gassed and it could have been because I was under more pressure. I feel like as a student like you have to show up every day perfect and impress your preceptor and like be the most like um willing to do anything, like ask a ton of questions. Like you just have to be on at like 24/7. So that could be why I was gasped, but I also think especially when you eat lunch. This is like so specific, but I've found it really like important for me now that I'm working. I try not to eat like a ton of food at one time because I remember like when I did my rotations, like and I ate a big meal at lunch, like I would have such a food coma and such a crash in the afternoon. Then starting this job, like I really basically, what I'll do this is like so specific. I will not eat in the morning. I'll have my coffee and then will not eat until I'm hungry at work. I feel like that's important. And my work like is chill enough to where I can. Um, I usually eat my protein oats for breakfast and I usually feel like I end up eating that around like 9:30. By the time 12:00 comes around and it's lunchtime. I typically have the thing that I've had the most are chicken soup dumplings from Trader Joe's. Just because they're only 250 calories and they are um kind of high in protein. So then I'll do that and then I usually have like a champ stick and like an apple and that's like all I'll eat at work and then I'll do like a very hearty dinner and like snack to like get some more calories in. So I'm not by any means saying restrict your calories, but if you're finding yourself like getting afternoon fatigue and stuff, like I would look into kind of what you're eating at lunch and not even like how many calories, but also like how many carbs because I feel like I used to just eat like a lot of rice or something like that and then I literally crash. Like I used to need an energy drink every single day and since working, I think I've maybe had one or two days where I'll do an energy drink. So I feel like my fatigue levels have been really good overall. That makes me happy because I was worried about that. I didn't want to like come home every day and like feel like I need to nap. Yeah, and I also feel like my sleep routine is very important too. So like making sure I have like time to wind down and get ready for bed. Now, this might be completely different once I start full-time because obviously I'll have four days, no, five days out of the week where I'll have to get up at 6:30 and not just three. So we'll see, but I I I have noticed that that lunchtime like meal makes a difference. We're just going to hang out. I usually just catch up on texts that I've missed throughout the day, go through like social media and that sort of stuff and sometimes like watch TV or YouTube. taking you guys through what my day off of work. So in the past, I have always kind of struggled like after work coming home and then just like laying on my couch for the rest of the night. Sometimes I need that because the day has been exhausting, but sometimes that just makes me feel sluggish and gross kind of, even though I know it shouldn't. But nonetheless, I have tried every day to always have something in my head that I can do that will make me feel productive. And the level of productivity, I feel like varies every day. It's not like a large task that I'm trying to accomplish after a full work day, but some examples are like putting away laundry that I haven't gotten around to or maybe just like tidying up the kitchen, putting dishes away or in this case, I wanted to post a Tik Tok. So I was finishing that up or sometimes finishing up a YouTube video or really anything like that. It just makes me feel like, okay, I got one like personal thing in my life accomplished today and just helps me feel like work isn't my entire life. Now, don't get me wrong, I can really struggle with the motivation to do this sometimes. So my friend actually taught me this trick to try to do like whatever that is that you need to do before you even like sit down after work and I've actually noticed that helps me quite a bit because once I'm down, I am down and it's so hard for me to get back up and I struggled with that all throughout P school rotations actually. I even vividly remember struggling with that during my medical assistant job. So just coming home and getting something checked off your to-do list is really nice. I would say the absolute hardest thing for me to do is to cook after a long day of work. I've been so blessed because my boyfriend has been home from work for like several months now and he cooks for us pretty much every night. We also do lots of leftovers, so he's not actually cooking every night, but he'll make the meal and then we'll have leftovers the rest of the time. So when he's gone away for work because he's a pilot, I try to make super quick and easy meals maybe once or twice a week max and then I just have leftovers the rest of the time. 8:22, I realized I really wanted to post a Tik Tok today that I filmed yesterday. So now that that's done, I actually didn't do my patient chart yet, so I honestly probably will have time to do it tomorrow at work. So I'm going to join Christian and watch the Lions game. So obviously this night looked a lot different. We don't always watch sports. We actually like never watch sports cuz that's really not my favorite thing in the world, but I actually have been enjoying watching the Lions. So typically I'd say like after dinner, Christian and I will watch something together. That's kind of like the one time of the day where we actually hang out. So we've been obsessed with The Voice recently that airs on Mondays and Tuesdays. So that's kind of what we watch then. We've also been on a huge Christmas movie kick, so we'll pick a movie and watch it as long as it's like not super long and taking me into like way too late. So yeah, it's really fun. We usually like have a snack or a fun little hot chocolate or something. So that's kind of our night routine together and how we are able to spend quality time together while I'm working.

[12:34]I So I just got ready for bed, feel fresh. I might watch like the third quarter of the football game before going to sleep. It's like almost 10:00 and I am sleepy and don't want to be exhausted tomorrow. We actually have our Christmas party tomorrow. So I don't think I'll get time to like really vege too much because after work, I'm going to hit the gym and then pretty soon have to get ready for the Christmas party. So anyways, um before every night I go to bed, I always make sure my lunch is prepped. Tomorrow's a half day, so I have my breakfast prepped and then I always have my outfit set out just so it's less to think about that early in the morning. And then Fridays are casual Fridays in my head, which means basically the whole office wears like scrubs or jeans or something. So we'll just do my black figs and then I literally set everything out. Shoes, socks, underwear, all the things. Bra, sock, underwear. And then I will wear my Patagonia on top. It's pretty much it. There you have it. That was my day. 10:45 I was in bed probably sleeping by 11:00.