For treatments ranging from a simple suture to a complicated surgical abdomen, every patient wants to receive care from a competent, confident, self-assured health care professional. Those key factors – competence, confidence, and self-assurance – lie at the heart of ApolloMD’s award-winning Advanced Practice Clinician (APC) Advancement Program.

The practice of rural medicine comes second nature to Robert Arledge, PA, Lead APC at Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital in Elkin, NC. Upon graduation from Emory University’s Physician Assistant program, he jumped at the chance to join the staff of a small-town hospital in Jackson, Georgia. While training at a busy metro facility gave him a top-notch education with the latest technology at his fingertips, he finds the rural environment brings a deeper connection to the upbringing that led him to seek a career in health care.

Evan Howell, MBA, MMSc, LSSBB, PA-C, recently presented at the Ohio Hospital Association Annual Meeting where he discussed a variety of approaches to address organizational change and how these methodologies can be applied to health care delivery.

For Fatimah Zaghari, PA-C, joining the Atrium Health Union Hospital Emergency Department team in 2019 gave her a homecoming to the professional family she’d formed along her career pathway. She now practices alongside some of the same mentors who urged her to keep pursuing her goals.

Lina Seda, PA has donated more than 5000 ounces of breast milk to babies in need including an infant dependent upon NG tube-feeding, the baby of an HIV+ mother, and one baby struggling with Food Protein-Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome (FPIES), a type of food allergy affecting the gastrointestinal tract. This is an incredible voluntary act to help babies and support their mothers.

In our latest Profile of Courage, a young North Carolina physician assistant (PA) finds himself monitoring juvenile COVID-19 patients quarantined at border patrol and embracing the challenge to serve kids in need. For Todd Harris, completing his MPAS in 2020 and then starting as a physician assistant at CaroMont Regional Medical Center in Gastonia, N.C. plants a long-awaited milestone on his journey toward a fulfilling career in health care.

For Peter Hairston, military service stands as a family tradition he hoped to continue. His father served as did previous generations before him. For Hairston the timing and prospects didn’t align until 2012 when a respected colleague, Dr. Henry Heard, presented a new pathway to uniform. “I got a wild hare and joined the military,” Hairston declares.