I'm a Pro.

Well this weekend I made a tour of Alabama, in a sense. First, I hit up Troy to watch MTSU's women play there. Then headed on up to Auburn to watch some softball before finally hitting Birmingham for the Alabama Society of Physician Assistant's (ASPA)conference.

The ASPA conference is a meeting of all PA members working in Alabama where they come listen to lectures and get CME credits for maintaining their licensure. These lectures range from Trauma Surgery to Diabetes to Adrenal Disease and everywhere in between. Today, there was a completely different program for students. We had morning lectures on how to code things so they can be billed properly and we get reimbursed (basically learn how to do it so you can get paid). Then, we learned about the PA job search and contract negotiations which was super enlightening. Next was the real fun....

The afternoon session started with us going into 3 groups to participate in 3 separate physical exam workshops. We had a Cardiac one where we listened to heart sounds and talked about different pathologies associated with them. In our Orthopedic group, we went through some knee and shoulder exam techniques. Then, in the Neuro group, we went through the major things to look for and what they may mean, specific to neurologic deficits. But even then, the real fun came next......
We had a casting lab and a suture lab. In the casting lab, we learned how to do short arm casts then got to put them on each other!! SO COOL! But the best of the best part was suture lab. They gave us the typical suture kit and a pig's foot. We gave our little piggy some lacerations then went to fixing them up. I put about 10 stitches in 2 separate cuts, and I'm not lying, they looked REAL good! haha. I just didn't have my phone to take a picture because I would have much rather posted that.

Anyways, all in all, I learned alot and it was a weekend well spent.

In HIM.