The PA Is In | Tracy Bingaman | Physician Assistant/Physician Associate/PA-C/PA-S/PA Student

No one is perfect and I believe that PAs graduate with a huge hole in their knowledge base: negotiating. We don’t learn enough about the strategies, tactics and business of medicine because we are too busy learning the actual clinical medicine. I’m sharing 10 of the top mistakes that I’ve made when negotiating for my PA salary and compensation package in the past. Yep, the expert makes mistakes, t...

As a PA in surgical subspecialties as well as a multi-sport athlete, Katie Aurand shares how she pursues her many passions. Katie is a trauma, acute care surgery, and surgical critical care PA. She’s also a Kona qualifier in the Ironman distance and a Boston Marathon qualifier. From coaching other athletes to raising her toddler, Katie is always on the go. In this episode, Katie shares how she dea...

Have you ever looked around and realized that you are waiting for everyone else to discover that you’ve been faking it this whole time? That your clinical confidence and competence were all a fluke and that you don’t truly belong in this job, profession, or specialty.  Imposter syndrome, specifically clinical imposter syndrome, is alive and well in healthcare today. Press play for a vulnerable loo...

Over 39 years as a Cardiothoracic surgery PA has given Stephanie Strazinsky a unique perspective. She has seen changes in the PA profession in clinical practice for nearly 4 decades!  Graduating in 1982, she took a job in general surgery and quickly transitioned into Cardiothoracic surgery where she stayed the remainder of her career. Not only was she the first PA in the Operating Room at her hosp...

The physician associate profession is on the cusp of a revolution. As a profession we are ready as PAs to grow up, regulate ourselves, and spread our wings to fulfill our full clinical potential. These changes need advocacy and action at both a state and federal level. It’s time to put our money and ourselves where our mouths are and take action by advocating for legal change as a profession.  I’m...

Did you know that children can start to deposit cholesterol in your coronary arteries as young as age 3? Young children learning to love movement and understand the importance of heart health is crucial to growing up healthy and avoiding heart disease down the road.  How can we promote healthy habits and how to tune into body cues in our children? Focus on how healthy choices make kids *feel* inst...

How do you create your dream job as a physician associate? These unicorn positions are created intentionally, carved out at the intersection of what the employer and practice needs and what you are passionate about and skilled in.  Identifying your sweet spot: what you love, enjoy, and a position with a schedule and compensation package for you. Knowing your sweet spot and what the dream job will...

When it comes to kids and cancer, those two things combine to create a pretty grim picture. But what happens to patients and families after cancer treatment when kids have gone through treatment and survived?  From leukemia being the most common pediatric cancer to the necessary follow up and the psychosocial implications for patients and families, navigating life after a pediatric cancer diagnosi...

The three step process to identify your healthcare burnout, diagnose the cause of burnout & create systems and boundaries to avoid burnout in the future. There is deep work involved in identifying your specific source of compassion fatigue and burnout, but the process is simple. Press play to discover the antidote for healthcare burnout and how to avoid becoming burned out again.  BURNOUT RISK...

Trigger warning: this episode contains discussions of a NICU stay, traumatic birth, postpartum depression and psychosis Join PA educator & momma Breanne Blake, PA-C as she shares her journey with postpartum depression after her traumatic birth. New motherhood is incredibly challenging & caring for new moms presents specific challenges.  Press play for a new perspective and a better underst...

You are not going to believe what my 4-year-old daughter told her friends that I do for work! Yep, the same daughter who called me STUPID for working too much is now telling her friends that I'm a... well, just press play to find out! FREE 30 MINUTE CONSULT https://calendly.com/the-pa-is-in/gen-call EMAIL LIST https://www.tracybingaman.com/email

Hope and healthcare don’t typically belong in the same sentence. Press play to hear my hope for each and every healthcare hero who worked through the pandemic, put patients and the system first, and is wondering what’s next.  If you’ve ever felt burned out, marginalized and disenfranchised by the system that is healthcare, press play.  If you’re searching for resources to rediscover your passion a...

Do you ever feel like you want to be a team player, but also don’t want to get stuck doing “other people’s jobs”? This feeling is normal, but how does it manifest in how you are showing up at work? Is it productive or preventing you from making progress? It’s not uncommon to look left and right and, seeing work to be done, think “well, that’s not my job.” My friend, it’s time to change this.  Ashl...

How do you know when it’s time to tough it out or to quit your job? Do you trust your logic or intuition to help you make career-changing decisions?  Press play to unpack how to use logic, a step-wise process to evaluate the pros and cons of quitting vs. staying in your job or tune in to that whisper of intuition when you are considering making a job change.  V.COTERIE https://vcoterie.com/   DECI...

Sharon Girard is much more than a PA. She’s an advocate, a politician, and an inspiration to working moms. Throughout her career, spanning 4 decades and specialties from emergency medicine, urgent care, women’s health, family medicine, occupational medicine and even a stint working internationally as a PA in England, she has pursued her passion at every turn. Full of great advice, tips on navigati...

A real life example of BOUNDARIES in work. What your boundaries need to have in order to be clear, communicated, and strong in order to be effective. FREE COACHING CALL https://calendly.com/the-pa-is-in/free 1-HOUR COACHING CALL https://calendly.com/the-pa-is-in/coaching SHOW NOTES https://www.tracybingaman.com/blog TRACY ON INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/mrstracybingaman/ ON LINKEDIN https:/...

Stressors exist. Burnout results from consistent stress that overwhelms your body’s ability to cope. Stress like a full inbox, an inbasket of test results, a heavy diagnosis or a sick patient is part of what it means to work in medicine. Are you effectively completing the stress cycle in your life? Most PAs aren’t. Most healthcare “heroes” are fighting a villain that no one can see: stressors. Add...

During her 17-year career as a PA, Ilaina Moyer has made many shifts, realizations and changes in her path. From emergency medicine to plastic surgery and shifting between inpatient, to academia, to outpatient and back into the hospital, these pivots were all to get to a schedule that worked for Ilaina and her family.  In this conversation, Ilaina shares what happens when you start to take these c...

Have you ever felt like you graduated from school, not understanding how to negotiate to earn more, or how the business of medicine worked? Jon Appino of Contract Diagnostics is our guest on The PA Is In speaking on all things contracts.  We will cover non-competes for advanced practice providers, how to ask questions in a respectful and curious way, how to clarify your employment contract and the...

You know by now that I walked through burnout and lived to tell the tale. I want my career as a PA, my teachings as a podcaster, and my life as Tracy, the human being to share that journey through burnout. I want to shed light on how hard it is physically, mentally, emotionally and in a relationship to be burned out.  Healthcare burnout affects more than 60% of current healthcare workers. Physicia...

One of my goals is to highlight Unicorn PAs who work in different, rare, and interesting fields this year. It’s one of those things that is fascinating to me: PAs who have taken a rare path, said yes to an opportunity, and leaned into a new field and loved it!  So this episode is all about how to identify that opportunity when it comes, and how it feels to step out of primary care and into a uniqu...

As you know, physician associate has taken the place of physician assistant as the professional title of choice, at least according to the AAPA. But, a professional title change takes time. How do you know when it’s “safe” and kosher to use physician associate in clinical settings? Press play to understand where we are in this title name change process, what you need to know and what needs to be t...

What could you do if you felt passionate and purposeful in your life and career again? If that’s not how you are feeling right now, you are not alone. Studies show that over 60% of healthcare providers report current symptoms of burnout.  Burnout, caused by prolonged or excessive stress that overwhelms your ability to cope. In 2020 in the midst of working inpatient Urology during the COVID-19 pand...

As an undergraduate pre-PA student, Joel Ciolek realized that his passion and purpose was pursuing ophthalmology as a physician associate. Now Joel is one of less than eighty PAs practicing in ophthalmology and has become a spokesperson and trailblazer for this specialty.  The eyes are said to be the window to the soul and Joel shares his soul, knowledge and experience getting into an ophthalmolog...

This episode is all about TIME. How we view our time. How we see time. How we value our own time (and others). Being burned changes our ability to be present and in the moment.  This behind-the-scenes episode was adapted from an email I sent to my email inbox besties - a group of PAs just like you on a mission to improve their lives and strive towards Unicorn status - if you want to get encouragin...