Courses For A Future Career
"But they have helped us tremendously. We couldn't cover the state as well as we do without them." Chesley, 37, has an undergraduate degree in medical assistant courses from the University of South Dakota, where he also earned his registered nurse credentials after two years of study.
He spent an additional year in a nurse practitioner program at the University of North Dakota, then took national medical assistant courses examinations to become a physician's assistant.
At first, Chesley said, he wanted to be a doctor. But he was married and had a child by his senior year in college, and the financial squeeze made attending medical school out of the question.
"I'm not as driven as many physicians have to be," he said, "and once I was introduced to the PA concept, I loved it. It seemed ideal. I didn't have to be the superman. I don't have 100 percent care responsibility for a patient." Although PAs tended to be mostly male at first, many of them Vietnam veterans, more women are entering the field. Today, about 60 percent of the students studying to be PAs nationwide are female. That's good because, with no war on, the original pipeline into the profession, the military medic system, has slowed considerably, according to William Finerfrock, director of the American Academy of Physician's Assistants. Not all states share South Dakota's high regard for PAs. New Jersey's medical board does not recognize them. In New Mexico, pharmacists have unsuccessfully challenged the right of PAs to dispense drugs. In other states, nurses have challenged whether they can be directed by PAs. "There was a feeling on the part of some nurses that they should be doing what PAs are doing, that instead of creating a new profession, they should have allowed for an expanded role for nurses," Finerfrock said. But none of these problems exists for Chesley, who is assisted at the Edgemont Medical Clinic by an emergency medical technician and a receptionist. In recent weeks, his patients have included an elderly woman who fractured her hip, a 45-year-old heart attack victim, a 51-year-old rancher who fractured his skull and five ribs, and a young cowboy whose scalp required 100 stitches after it was partially ripped away while he attempted to mount a penned steer. "I'd say he is a doctor for what we need," said Edgemont resident Ward Wasserburger, who is Billy's uncle. A new type of medical assistant may be just the right medicine for hospitals suffering from the national nursing shortage.
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