Author: Hannah Paton

After 10 years working as a Physician Assistant (PA) with different physician groups, Patrick Willet, PA-C, DMSc, decided he wanted to be in an environment that offered professional independence and growth- that is what brought him to AP Health.

Early Attraction to Healthcare Field

Growing up in Maine, Patrick knew he wanted a career in healthcare from an early age. After shadowing his family physician PA, as well as practitioners in other fields, he decided to pursue a career as a PA because of the capability to explore multiple specialties and opportunities, a characteristic incredibly unique to the APP field.

Patrick received a master’s degree from Keiser University’s PA program and took a job working for a physician group where he focused on orthopedic surgery and pain management.

“My first job gave me the opportunity to get experience in the clinical world, then slowly get my feet into the OR,” Patrick says. “I fell in love with the surgical pathway; I enjoyed the postoperative care, rounding in hospitals, and was able to transition away from more of the clinic work.”

Patrick then went to work for a large orthopedic group, serving in a pool of PAs. There, PAs rotated duties for clinic, rounding and surgery. The ratio of physicians to PAs required on-call duties every six days and weekends every six weeks.

“That doesn’t sound like a lot of weekends being on call, but it was literally 24-hour coverage Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which became overwhelming,” he explains.

His next job was working directly for an individual physician in more of a one-on-one relationship. In that role, he and the physician shared clinic, rounds and call.

“That job offered more responsibility, but the hours were long and only got longer,” Patrick recalls. “I was in a salary-based structure, and after a while, I looked at the number of hours and the late nights I was working and felt undervalued. Career growth is very important to me, and I started feeling like my growth and compensation were plateauing.  This is when I decided to go back to grad school. I felt like PAs were underrepresented in healthcare leadership positions, so I wanted to enhance my opportunity to grow.

Patrick earned a doctorate in healthcare administration and leadership from Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions in Provo, Utah Not wanting to completely leave clinical medicine, he found an opportunity at AP Health that provided the right balance. At AP Health, Patrick is our Director of Clinical Services, specifically for the Palm Beach region. In this role, he oversees the day-to-day operations in the ORs, manages the team of providers, and helps seek out new opportunities for business development and growing our market in that area.

“There are certain weeks when I’m in the OR 3-4 days because of coverage needs, but my main role is to make sure our people are positioned properly, our surgeons are happy, and our hospital customers are satisfied with the services they receive from us.”.”

Patrick Likes Professional Independence Offered by AP Health

“As part of my job, I get to talk to a lot of practitioners who are considering coming to AP Health,” Patrick says. “One of the biggest things I hear is that they are being burned out in their current positions. They’re overwhelmed from covering clinic, the OR and call. They hate coming home at night and doing two hours of EMR, making sure their notes are complete and reviewing labs. They feel like they are being asked to work harder and harder, yet they are stuck in a salaried position with often unattainable productivity bonus structures. This usually happens after about six years in the profession.”

Patrick says what they find attractive at AP Health is the transparent compensation and benefits structure that gives the practitioner more control over their work and life.

“It’s kind of an ‘eat what you kill’ approach,” he explains. “If you want to work more and make more money, we have that. If you need to dial it back for whatever reason, we can accommodate that. If you want to focus on certain specialties, we offer that, as well. The pay structures and bonus structures are very straightforward and appealing.

“I think advanced practitioners, especially those with some experience, are looking for the kind of professional independence that we offer,” Patrick says. “They want to have more say in how their life and work are structured. Having that independence avoids burnout and improves retention. I know that my mental health has improved, and my stress levels are far better than they were before, as I feel more in control of my personal and professional ambitions. I hear the same from practitioners who have joined AP Health.”

Nashville, TN — AP Health is proud to be Certified™ by Great Place to Work® for the 3rd year in a row. The prestigious award is based entirely on what current employees say about their experience working at AP Health. This year, 86% of employees said it’s a great place to work – 29 points higher than the average U.S. company. 

Great Place to Work® is the global authority on workplace culture, employee experience, and the leadership behaviors proven to deliver market-leading revenue, employee retention and increased innovation. 

“Great Place to Work Certification™ isn’t something that comes easily – it takes ongoing dedication to the employee experience,” said Sarah Lewis-Kulin, vice president of global recognition at Great Place to Work. “It’s the only official recognition determined by employees’ real-time reports of their company culture. Earning this designation means that AP Health is one of the best companies to work for in the country.” 

Founder & CEO, J. Toby Gray says, “We are thrilled to be Great Place to Work-Certified™.   Employee culture is a top priority for us, and we value what our employees think about the company. We owe our continued success to our team of dedicated employees at AP Health and celebrate them for all they do to earn this recognition.” 

“This is our third year as a company participating in the Great Place to Work® program and the feedback we gain each year is incredibly valuable,” says COO Greg Flanagan. “We actioned categories that had room for improvement and the results of this year show that. We continue to put employee satisfaction at the forefront of AP Health and our employees think so too.” 

According to Great Place to Work research, job seekers are 4.5 times more likely to find a great boss at a Certified great workplace. Additionally, employees at Certified workplaces are 93% more likely to look forward to coming to work, and are twice as likely to be paid fairly, earn a fair share of the company’s profits and have a fair chance at promotion. 

WE’RE HIRING! 

Looking to grow your career at a company that puts its people first? Visit our LinkedIn Career Page for more information. 

About Great Place to Work Certification™ 

Great Place to Work® Certification™ is the most definitive “employer-of-choice” recognition that companies aspire to achieve. It is the only recognition based entirely on what employees report about their workplace experience – specifically, how consistently they experience a high-trust workplace. Great Place to Work Certification is recognized worldwide by employees and employers alike and is the global benchmark for identifying and recognizing outstanding employee experience. Every year, more than 10,000 companies across 60 countries apply to get Great Place to Work-Certified.  

I started my career in cardiac surgery nearly 40 years ago. The advances that I’ve witnessed in terms of procedures, medicines and machines have transformed the nature and the effectiveness of the cardiac OR. While we still have heart and lung machines in the OR that pump and oxygenate blood, the technical sophistication of an operation has increased dramatically. The result is that more patients not only live but return to their normal lives much sooner.

In the early 1980s, the average cardiac surgical patient was intubated for 24 hours and then spent three days in the ICU. If they did well, they went home about a week later. Today, that patient is only intubated for four hours, are up and walking on day one and go home typically on day 4 or 5.

Back then if you had a complicated heart problem, the only device that was used was the intraaortic balloon pump. While we still have them, they are used much less frequently because we have so many more tools in our arsenal. We used to do frequent surgical aortic valve replacements, which requires opening up the chest; However, those have been essentially replaced by transcatheter aortic valve replacements (TAVRs), which are less invasive and offer faster recovery times.

Similarly, endoscopic procedures to harvest a vein for use in bypass surgeries have also made those procedures less invasive. We used to open up someone’s leg to get the needed blood vessel through a long incision and now it is done through a couple of small incisions. Today, we’re more aggressive about complete arterial revascularization and endoscopically remove the radial artery in your arm through a small incision by your wrist.

Advances in medicines have also improved outcomes and the quality of patients’ lives. Historically, you could count the medicines we had in our arsenal on one hand; now we have dozens, and they keep getting better. For example, it wasn’t that long ago that statins, aspirin, and Beta blockers were not a standard drug for heart disease. Now they are prescribed by your primary care physician and have helped stave off surgery for thousands of patients.

Of course, the devices and machines that enable these advanced procedures have and continue to evolve as well. Many people have heard of the ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) machine due to the pandemic because it provided oxygen to the blood of severely challenged COVID patients. Those machines are placed by the cardiac teams on staff. We also have a variety of devices such as the left atrial clip which reduces stroke risk in atrial fibrillation, as well as left and right ventricular assist devices (LVADs) (Impella) to assist the heart in pumping blood.

Advances Require Increasingly Sophisticated Surgical Staff

As cardiac surgery has become more advanced, the surgical staffing role has also become more challenging. The skills needed have become more complex such as vent management, intubation, chest tube insertion, central lines and vein harvesting. While school provides a foundation, there is so much more to learn and skills to be developed for cardiac surgery that schools simply don’t provide. There is ongoing CME to keep up with the latest information. The device companies frequently have small seminars to keep us refreshed in the latest information on their devices.

At AP Health, we staff the cardiac surgery programs at three hospitals in South Florida: Holy Cross Health, Jupiter Medical Center and Bethesda Hospital. These are major cardiac surgery programs on the forefront of cardiac care. To serve our customers, we have a program to develop staff.

Not every practitioner comes to us with the same skillset. They might have surgical experience but have never worked with an ECMO. Or, they have may have worked in cardiology, but never done endoscopic graft harvesting or worked in the ICU.

We give our practitioners the knowledge and experience they need to be successful in an advanced and complex cardiac surgical program. Some of this comes from training by the manufacturers of the machines and devices we use on a daily basis. Some of it is on-the-job training where I, along with other staffers, share our knowledge and help them develop the skills needed.

After 40 years, I still love working in cardiac surgery. It has been rewarding to witness the advancements made and to continue to develop my skills to improve outcomes for the patients in our care. I also enjoy working with younger practitioners so that they will not only be successful today, but in the future as new procedures, medicines and devices continue to advance the treatment of coronary disease.