AAPA National Conference and White Coat Ceremony

Hey guys!  It's been a little while, but some exciting things have happened that I thought I should report on.

Firstly: IMPACT 2013 - AAPA's 41st Annual Physician Assistant Conference in Washington D.C.

IMPACT is where thousands of PAs and PA students gather for a week's worth of lectures, speeches, and workshops designed to keep us up to date on new information, procedures, and regulations.

13 from my class and 4 faculty were able to attend.  We had Memorial Day off anyway and faculty was nice enough to give us Tuesday off as well.  So, we flew up last Saturday morning and came back Tuesday night. There were 5 guys in our group.  We had booked a two bed room for the 3 nights, but the hotel overbooked, so we were stuck in this one, haha...

 It wasn't so bad.  I'm not opposed to sleeping on the floor.

I was able to attend quite a few lectures, but the highlight of the conference was definitely the National Medical Challenge Bowl.  There were 68 3-man teams representing PA schools from around the country.  I was lucky enough to represent the University of Florida.

 

We made it through the first cut that weeded out half of the 68 teams.  Pretty impressive since we beat programs from schools like Duke and Emory University.  We kinda got screwed on one question then lost the tie-breaker.  This picture was on the AAPA Facebook page the next day.

So, we lost, but it was all good.  We had fun doing it.

While there, I was also able to get out and see some of the sights.

 

Secondly: White Coat Ceremony.

After getting back to Gainesville, we only had 2 days of class since White Coat Ceremony was scheduled for Friday.  White Coat is a mini-graduation of sorts.  It marks our transition from the didactic portion of our training to clinical work.  I can't believe the year is almost over.  Even more so, I can't believe I'm about to be entrusted with the care of actual patients.  Things are getting real very quickly.

 

While I missed having family there, it was great being surrounded by so many amazing friends.  Besides, it was too short a ceremony to expect family to travel so far.  Graduation will be much more of a milestone.