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Project Access brings PA career to high schools by Kathy J. Gatten College of Health Professions It was exactly what the American Academy of Physician Assistants and the Association of Physician Assistant Programs had in mind when they visualized Project Access: a group of high school students interested in a health care career gathered around learning what it’s really like to be a health professional.  When Ukeme J. Usanga, an assistant professor in the College of Health Professions’ Physician Assistant program, visited Summerville High School in early March, she took along printed information and a video. More important, she brought her own experiences, her views about the many positive benefits of her chosen field, and advice on how these students could prepare for their future.  Only one student in the room had ever heard of a physician assistant. The health careers they had in mind ranged from pediatrics to nursing to emergency medicine. But when asked what characteristics they felt they would need to be a health professional in general, they had some clear ideas.  They would need to be able to get along with people, to be caring but also to know when to draw the line so they wouldn’t get emotionally attached, and to be patient. Usanga agreed with their assessment, particularly the importance of being tolerant of everyone’s language, circumstance, and culture - stressing that this trait would benefit them not only in health care, but in anything they chose to pursue. Usanga attended a national conference in Atlanta last year where she participated in a Project Access outing to a local high school. What she saw was sobering. “Very few students had ever heard of physician assistants and even fewer were familiar with the role of the PA in a health care team,” she remembers. If this were true in Georgia (which has approximately 1800 licensed physician assistants), she reasoned, then the situation must be even worse in South Carolina, with only 190 practicing PAs. Usanga wondered, “If students don’t know about the profession, how can they consider it as a career option?” Usanga’s experience in Atlanta led to a partnership with Marva Gibbs of Lowcountry AHEC, who sets up heath career clubs in area schools. It’s these clubs that Ukeme targets for her outings. With her she takes student volunteers, who share personal stories about why they have chosen this profession and how it compares to other health careers.  Those students in Summerville High School now know what a PA does, the length and type of curriculum involved, where they might practice, what their starting salary might be, and what they need to be doing now to prepare themselves for this career.  In a state where 42 out of 46 counties are medically underserved, this could be the beginning of an answer to South Carolina’s rural health care needs.