Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 9 No. 3 | January 2017

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14 Inside Hokie Sports
Colleen Ward is a senior attack on the lacrosse team who will graduate
next December with a degree in biochemistry. She plans on applying to various
physician’s assistant programs, with the goal of becoming a physician’s assistant.
Q: Why did you decide to major in biochemistry?
CW: “Originally, I wanted to work with prosthetics and occupational therapy on
the engineering side of it. In general, I wanted to work in the health field and make an
impact that way. I’ve always had a passion for helping people and working with them,
and I knew I was better at science and math than English. So that was the direction
that I chose to start off.
“Then in college it became, ‘Well, why would I want to stick to just one field? Why
wouldn’t I want to become a general physician’s assistant and help people in a broader
way?’ So that led me to wanting to be a physician’s assistant.”
Q: Have you worked as an intern or worked in any positions related to
this field?
CW: “Last summer, I was an emergency department volunteer at Anne Arundel
Medical Center in Annapolis … basically, I was the handyman for anything the nurses
needed. In addition, I shadowed a lot of physicians and PA’s [physician’s assistants]
just to get more experience as to what specialty I might want to go into. I shadowed
an OB/GYN, a rheumatologist, internal medicine … it was interesting seeing all the
different fields.
“In high school, I worked at a PT facility [physical therapy] as a part-time job, and
I was what you’d call a ‘tech.’ I told people what exercises they had next and explained
what they were. A lot of it was being able to read what the PT wrote in anatomical
terms and translate it to English that the patients could understand. I also was in
charge of the pool area for when patients came back and did pool workouts. So that
was a cool job.”
Q: So what are your future plans?
CW: “My long-term plan is to be a physician’s assistant, hopefully in the pediatric
area. I like working with kids. I plan to finish my undergraduate degree in the fall,
and I’ll stay in Blacksburg. Hopefully, I’ll get a scribe position [to dictate a physician’s
notes, order medication, enter a patient’s information on online forms, etc.] or a
phlebotomist position [someone who takes a patient’s blood]. For PA [physician’s
assistant] school, you need so many patient-care, hands-on hours, and to do that, you
basically have to work a full-time job for a half a year or a full year before applying.
So hopefully, I’ll work for Lewis-Gale or Carilion. I’ll actually apply this June and
hopefully find out next June because it’s a year-long application process.”
Q: And how long would you be in a physician’s assistant program?
CW: “Anywhere from 25 to 35 months, so two to three years, and then you have
residency at the end of it. It’s a long process, but it isn’t nearly as long as a medical
school residency. The one thing about being a PA that is different is that you don’t have
to pick a specialty. You can come out with a generic PA graduate degree, and you can
switch between specialties. Your physician just trains you in the specialty. In medical
school, you have to pick the specialty and you get specialized in it and your residency is
specialized. You can’t switch without going back to school and starting over again.”
2017
COLLEEN
WARD
LACROSSE
Odenton, Maryland
by Jimmy Robertson