Did I go submit a 10 page manuscript and do a poster presentation on breast cancer and its relationship to IVF (in vitro fertilization) to get out of going to clinicals for a week? Yes. But also, it was so awesome and such a great opportunity!
I was feeling burnt out with school/clinicals and this was the perfect break (despite being in lectures all day) to remember my “why” and the reason I fell in love with pathology in the first place.
Every year, two students from each NAACLs accredited Pathologists’ Assistant program get to go to the conference and present on a case that they had grossed during their clinical year! For WVU, we had to submit an abstract of our case and a committee reviews all of the submissions and chooses the two students who get to go! If you are the chosen students, you get a flight to the conference and the entire conference paid for!
Below is an example of one of the schedule for one of the days! It was jam packed with lectures and events to attend. The students had to attend every event that was offered for the day as part of getting everything for free. They were long days and I honestly forgot how tiring it was go to lectures lol.
Not only was this a great opportunity to meet people from all across the country, the other student delegate from WVU (Alyssa) and I were both offered multiple jobs while presenting our posters! Despite both of us having jobs, I know one student from another school had already set up an interview while being there! One of the nights, we actually got to meet up with all the WVU alumni that were at the conference too.
Now let me show you what got me to the conference! So this was a patient who ended up having four separate masses in her breast, BUT imaging had only identified 3 separate masses. Now PAs, this is how we keep our jobs and why they are important! While imaging is helpful, you cannot solely focus on imaging or you will lose sight of the big picture, which ended up being a 10 cm mass that I had identified grossly that imaging did not see! This mass was the mass that ultimately staged the patient as having a stage 3 breast cancer.
I cannot believe this journey is almost over! I will hopefully write a few more posts before the end of the year. Talk to ya’ll soon…xoxo!
P.S. Try to get your job to pay for you to go to the conferences every year! Almost everyone who was there was able to go because their employer paid for it and allowed that time off!
Sectioning Success: My Time as a PA Student 