Interview: Kayla Nunemacher ~ Physician Assistant

Pronouns: she/her

Current job title: Physician Assistant at Bellevue Hospital

Education Background: BS and MS in Exercise Physiology and MS in Physician Assistant Studies

What skills did you acquire as a student that prepared you the most for your position/career?

Talking to difficulty patients in practice interviews in PA school. Also, my research background has helped the way that I approach complex patients with multiple problems to think through the case 1 step and 1 complaint at a time.

Which activities or courses do you wish you had taken to be better prepared for what you are doing right now?

I wish I had taken microbiology to better understand infectious disease (it wasn't a requirement for my PA program).

What's a typical work week for you? Do you think that your duties are the same for anyone with your job title or level within an organization?

We're required to work three, 12.5-hour shifts a week but often my colleagues and I pick up additional moonlighting shifts in a week. In general, the medicine we do at Bellevue is the same complexity as anywhere else, but we as the PAs have to be more versatile and come up with ways to get other tasks done that would normally happen in a private hospital without any extra pushing on the provider's end.

What are the greatest rewards of your work?

Taking care of a patient population, that if it weren't for Bellevue and the public hospital system, wouldn't have access to healthcare.

If things develop as you would like, what types of career goals do you see for yourself?

I'd like to move from general medicine to critical care medicine in a few years as the patients are higher acuity and more complex. I'd also like to eventually become an adjunct instructor for a PA program as I've enjoyed helping precept students that rotate with our team.

Is there anything you wished you had known about this field when you were just starting out?

How important it is to take time for yourself during the workday and on your days off to just process everything that is going on around you. It's something my instructors always talked about during school w/ regards to provider burn out, but I really couldn't appreciate how essential it was until actually working full time.

Has your typical work week changed prior to the Covid-19 outbreak? Why or why not?

Things are mostly back to normal now, but during the peak of the pandemic, many of us were working 5-6 12 hour days a week because many of the PAs in our department got sick.

What has been the biggest challenge?

Coping with multiple very sick patients at once and getting better at compartmentalizing my feelings after losing a patient. Many of us lost multiple patients unfortunately during the pandemic and you had to process that feeling quick and then get to the next very sick patient to try to help.

Lastly, is there anything you want to shout out to the world?

Wear a mask!!!!!