In Practice: Reflections from NPs and PAs

October 19th, 2016

Fighting Decision Fatigue

Harrison Reed, PA-C

It was an impossible choice. The seconds ticked by, but no matter how I strained my mind, I could not find a solution. She sighed and asked again. “Harrison, where do you want to eat?” I buried my face in my hands. How could this simple question stump a person who makes a hundred monumental choices each […]

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September 14th, 2016

Service Industry

Harrison Reed, PA-C

“You little clown,” A fleck of saliva flew from his mouth with each word. “Are you making a joke?” The back of my neck grew hot as I sweltered under the man’s glare. He had arrived to the airport hours before his scheduled flight dragging his wife and three kids, depleted from a week at Disney […]

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August 10th, 2016

Playing Victim

Harrison Reed, PA-C

You are sick of hearing it, but we need to talk about this one more time. By the end you might be angry or frustrated; you might even hate me a little. That’s OK. It’s worth it. America’s opioid epidemic is nothing less than a crisis. I could bury you under CDC statistics but I think […]

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June 29th, 2016

The Specialty Shuffle

Harrison Reed, PA-C

People tell me new things about my profession all the time. Forbes magazine loves to periodically declare it the best career in the country or the world or the universe, depending on the article. I find it hard to believe the people who write about money all day had time to sample every career before […]

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May 25th, 2016

The Book and The Novelty

Harrison Reed, PA-C

In 1985, Frederic Friedel destroyed the game of chess. At least that’s what some purists think. Friedel rocked the chess world when he created Chessbase, a computerized database that catalogued every single game of chess ever played. This stockpile of chess history not only recorded the individual moves of every match, it revealed an embarrassing truth: […]

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April 20th, 2016

Wave

Harrison Reed, PA-C

Your feet pound a messy drumbeat on the pavement. The wet T-shirt plastered to your skin pulls against your expanding rib cage with each breath. That little tickle in your left side grows from a dull twinge to a searing pain. On the road ahead, a silhouette appears between the blinding rays of sunlight, bouncing to […]

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March 16th, 2016

Drawing Meds: An Interview with Clinician-Artist Jorge Muniz, PA-C

Harrison Reed, PA-C

There’s nothing textbook about Jorge Muniz’s style. The physician assistant and emerging artist is as unique as his creation, Medcomic, a humorous cartoon collection that delivers medical education in a flurry of colorful punches. Muniz juggles full-time clinical practice with the skyrocketing popularity of Medcomic, but the balancing act is nothing new. After all, he started […]

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February 10th, 2016

What Did You Expect?

Harrison Reed, PA-C

One night in the early 1960s, psychology researcher Robert Rosenthal snuck into his own laboratory. He crept along rows of cages filled with albino rats and assigned each animal a designation: this rat is smart; this rat is dumb. But, along with these labels, he sowed deceit. The rats all came from the same scientific supply […]

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January 6th, 2016

Good, Then Fast

Harrison Reed, PA-C

“I hate to say it, but in this job it’s better to be fast than good.” And I hate to hear it. I hate that, as the years go by, it’s a concept that seems to grow in popularity. I hate that the people saying it have been working much longer than me. I should respect […]

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November 25th, 2015

Looking and Finding

Harrison Reed, PA-C

Harrison Reed, PA-C, practices emergency medicine in Las Vegas, NV. I sat in the bulky padded chair and eyed the mechanical gadgetry around me. “What did you say this was for?” I tried to not sound confrontational, but there must be some deformity of my vocal cords that makes it hard. “It’s called a CT scanner,” the […]

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