How PA Students Prepare for Practice!

Hello everyone and welcome back to Exactly and welcome to our first podcast episode of 2026. My name is Brooke and I'm going to be your host. Um today's conversation is all about preparing future PAs for success. Not just getting into PA school, but thriving through the rigorous training that it takes for them uh to become PAs. stepping into clinical practice with confidence and also understanding how the profession continues to evolve from professionalism and clinical readiness to leadership and advocacy. There is a lot to unpack today and I'm really excited for this discussion. I am thrilled to introduce our guest today uh Dr. Victoria Galloway. Dr. Galloway is a clinical associate professor and serves as the PA program director at Barry College. She's been a PA since 2004, which you wouldn't know it, um, by the looks of her, um,

and spent her career serving, uh, rural communities. So, Dr. Galloway, uh, welcome to Exactly. We're so happy to have you. Thank you so much, Brooke. Awesome. Well, I am selfishly going to start this with my own question. Um, that was not really originally going to be a part of today's conversation, but so before we dive too deep into the education, I'm going to start by asking something that may be new to the general public. So my p primary provider is a PA and I just refer to her as a PA. But in our you know previous conversations and also reading your bio out loud um the profession seems to have moved from physician assistant to physician associate. So from your perspective can you talk to us a little bit about this name change and kind of how and where it came from?

Sure. So, the American Academy of PAs, which is now the American Academy of Physician Associates, voted a few years ago. Um, so this is not not new um for us as a profession, but it it's starting to become more commonplace to hear that terminology. It really was just a terminology change. It was a name change. It was not a scope change or a change in the things that we can do. and the decision was to have a name or a change that more accurately um describes or depicts the things that we already do. Um there was a lot of um misinformation about what PAS do as far as being assistants. Um and so I think that the name um the new terminology better align with us being clinical partners and collaborators in medicine.

Um the name change at this point has been adopted um by several states legally where PAS now can reference themselves in clinical practice as physician associates but there are still many states the majority of states PAs legally still refer to themselves as physician assistants or as PAs in the state. So you're hearing so my state may be one of them still. So maybe I'm not too far behind there but no it's I mean and they're really just interchangeable for we're PAS. Okay, awesome. I love it. So, that context is super super helpful. So, let's shift into how PA programs really help to prepare students for that level of responsibility that you were talking about, right? So, um we'll just jump right into it. So, what in your experience, what do you feel like applicants for PA school, what do they underestimate most about school uh once they're accepted? And if you have any fun examples of all of your years with,

you know, working with students that you could share, I'm sure our listeners would love that, too. Sure. We we're actually right now in the middle of an admissions cycle. Um, and so I recently, um, just this week was meeting with candidates, and we always make sure to leave time at the end for the candidates to be able to ask us questions. Um, and so this these are questions that candidates ask us on a regular basis. What am I what am I not prepared for? what should I do to better prepare for PA school I if I'm accepted or during that period of time um or what do what am I underestimating in making this transition um and I really think for most students it comes down to workload and time commitment right um so I think students a lot of times right they see the credit hour they see the the 24 27 month curriculum um they know that it's going to be rig rigorous. You know, we've got students,

some of them already have master's degrees that are applying. Some of them have worked two jobs and have done sports and had full credit loads, but then they get to PA school and um I love our cohort that we currently have. They they are a dream. Um, but it it was, you know, refreshing to see how well they did take the workload and the curriculum um, in making sure that they balanced their time commitment. I mean, you're in class pretty much from 8 to 5 every day.