Informational InterviewName: Stefanie OwczarskiTitle: physician assistant and clinical instructorEmployer: MUSC in Charleston, SCDate Conducted: March 19th at 12pm

1. What personal qualities or abilities are important to being successful in this field? Self-confidence and self-motivation are very important qualities to have. It is important to sustain this motivation. These define a good student. Good students keep track of what they need to know and check their resources, whereas bad students know little about the possibilities out there. Overall, you need to be a good communicator because you’re a part of a team. You need to learn how to communicate well and understand your role in the team.

2. What inspired you to choose this career?The flexibility that it provides outside of work that a doctor doesn’t have. I don’t want to be on call. I want to be able to be a wife and have the option to have kids. It provides a good quality of life. My career is important to me but I want to be able to enjoy my family after work.

3. What do you do on a typical day?I work Monday through Friday starting at 7 or 8am and I leave around 4 or 5pm. On Mondays, I do research. Tuesdays and Wednesdays I am in the clinic. Thursdays I do administrative things. I am not on call and I don’t work nights or anything like that.

4. How many days per week do you work?Monday through Friday but outside of work I may do research and am in touch with residents pretty much 24/7. I am available to respond to my emails on weekends and after work. I am able to get back to people pretty quickly through email.

5. What part of your job do you find the most challenging?Communicating with every member of the team. Some of the nurses are older and very smart but some of them find it hard to take orders from a PA if they’ve been there forever. There’s a lot of disrespect that I must work through. I am the opposite of soft spoken and I’ve had to learn to pull back some. I am not a touchy feely type of person, I just want to get the job done and help my patients so I can get home to my family.

6. What part of your job do you find the most satisfying?Taking care of the patients, patient care. Giving them advice. Nothing is better than telling people what your knowledge is. Health is so beautiful and disease is so terrible when it strikes and affects quality of life.

7. How stressful do you consider your job?It really depends. Sometimes I’ve got two phones in my hands and I have to do a lot of multi-tasking. But I thrive in chaos. In that case I like to get home and have a glass of wine and watch mindless TV. One time, we had someone with a critical illness who had just been in a car crash. He was 19 and had no vital signs when he got to us. We had to revitalize him and restore his vital signs. So that was really stressful.

8. What prior jobs, if any, did you have before working at MUSC?I’ve actually had a lot of jobs before MUSC. I worked as a PA in cardiology for a year. And then I worked in trauma here for 4 years then moved to GI, which I’ve been doing for 8 years now. Before being a PA I also worked in retail and was an aerobics instructor. I also worked in a nonprofit clinic before PA school.

9. Which PA school did you go to?University of Florida

10. Did you go to PA school right after graduating from college? If not, what did you do in the time between?No, I was waitlisted the first time I applied. Wait listing is a positive thing, I know it may seem like rejection and make you feel like a failure but it happens a lot. They want to see that you are trying to improve your resume. I worked at the nonprofit clinic for 1 year and ¾ in between college and PA school.

11. What other careers did you consider when you were choosing your career path?I wanted to be an actress. I pursued this degree and went to acting school in New York for 6 months. I worked retail during this time and did not want to be stuck in retail forever. So I was going to go to nursing school so that I could work nights and pursue acting during the day. But my friend told me that nursing school did not fit my personality and suggested PA school and I thought it seemed like a good fit so I did that.

12. How challenging was PA school?It’s tough. If you think college is hard, PA school is very tough. There are two exams a week and both are very hard. But the friends you make in PA school last forever. Everyone studies together; I like to study by myself so I didn’t do that very much. But some friends and I still do a girls week. We are all very different but very good friends. It’s kind of like your family where you don’t like some of them but you just have to stay out of it. It’s a small world and you don’t want to say something bad about a PA and then not get hired somewhere because of it.

13. What are your roles as a clinical instructor at MUSC?I take on interns and teach PA students and residents. And I teach a surgery class for PA students as well.

14. What, if anything, do you wish you had known before you entered this occupation?Timing. I really wouldn’t change anything but I may have strived for something better. When you’re a PA, that’s it. Doctors have other opportunities, like research and things like that. PA school is two years and time really flies by. Medical school is only 4 years and it’s not that scary. Time goes by and you realize you could have been done with medical school at this point in your life. I may have gone to medical school. And residents get paid a little bit and form such strong relationships with their fellow residents.

15. What special advice would you give a person entering this field?Be a good communicator. It’s a small world and you may hate people but you still have to communicate with them. There’s that saying keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. Recognize that everyone on the team is important, people in speech, physical therapy; each of them has a different role and good advice to give.