Horrible experience as a PA

Firstly, I’d like to stress that I am not here to provoke nor do I write this with an agenda, which goes beyond a wish to vent.

My first job as a PA was in cardiology at a large teaching hospital. I don’t even know where to begin, but I need to finally talk about this.

I was in charge of carrying out a ward round entirely alone for one bay and four side rooms. There were stable patients simply awaiting CABG whom I was happy to see, however, a large number of patients presented me with problems beyond my ability.

There were no FY1s on the ward because cardiology was considered too complex, yet they were employing a PA. The FY2s were incredibly busy and it wasn’t their job to supervise me. When I had questions about patients or wanted something prescribed, they were understandably unwilling to do so without having seen the patient themselves. I couldn’t possibly ask them to review over half of my patients.

I tried to go to the registrar on the ward, but he’d bark at me to not disturb him for ‘trivial matters’. They weren’t trivial. I needed to know how deranged someone bloods need to be before you get worried. I needed to know if these T wave inversions are worth getting concerned about. I needed to know if that’s really a new murmur I’m hearing. I went home each day petrified I had made a grave error and had many nights of broken sleep. My stress levels were like nothing I had experienced before.

I was a good student. I graduated top of my year, so it’s not as though I had simply scraped through and my knowledge was below expected.

I went to a consultant and expressed my concerns and she told me that cardiology is easy as they are already diagnosed when they arrive on the ward. To be reassured by this is insane as my patients went on to suffer strokes, PEs, urinary retention and develop sepsis. The urinary retention I nearly missed and the consultant simply said “oh it’s hard to kill patients. He would’ve gone into renal failure and bloods would’ve detected it”. Ludicrous. What an appalling attitude.

I recognised my limitations and that I was being pushed beyond them. It was clear no doctor was happy to supervise me, so I made the decision to resign. The experience was infact so traumatic that I made the decision to leave the career altogether.

I’ve been reflecting on this and feel so angry that I was put in this position.

Just needed to get that out.