Navigating Your Path to Success

Shana Perman shares tips for new APPs, emphasizing mentorship, learning resources, team building, and goal-setting for success in fertility practices.

Hi, I'm Shana Perman. I'm a physician assistant at Shady Grove Fertility in Washington, D.C. and in Columbia, Maryland. And so I just want to talk to you about navigating the path to success and looking at different ways for new practice REI APPs and their mentors and what we can do to really help navigate that process.

So today we're going to be talking about how to utilize a mentor, looking at different examples of medical education opportunities and looking for other areas of community involvement. So when we're talking about mentors, it's really important that you find someone within your practice that is your type of person and how you want to be as a provider to emulate. So that may or may not be someone that has mentored you from the start.

It may or may not be someone who has precepted you to teach you kind of the ropes of the practice. So looking for someone to just bounce questions off of and really figure out how to carve your way within the practice is so important. And if you are a mentor, it's important that even mentors have mentors because it just gives you a little path to guide you and figure out where you're going next.

When you're talking about using a new to practice APP, I like to people to start to start small with their practice and then branch out. So when you're talking about getting involved in a practice, you want to make sure you understand the flow and how to navigate your practice first. So those are tiny things like administration and the company structure, looking at procedures for submitting PTO or holiday shifts and reimbursement for CME money.

And once you have that path, I like to navigate out from that. So when you're in the practice and you're off orientation, I think it's important to make sure that before you're off orientation that you have experienced as many providers in the practice as possible. Everyone's saying the same thing, but they're using different words.

So it gives you a wonderful opportunity to hear all different kinds of ways to phrase information and kind of carve out how you want to say things yourself. I like as a mentor to be able to point out the things that your company does really well and make sure that new APP sees that and make sure they're utilizing those resources for the practice. When you're mentoring someone, I think it's important to also make sure you give them guidance of where do you go past what we're learning in the office.

So looking at the governing bodies for ASRM and SART, explaining how those all work together and really looking, giving some examples of where to learn more. So through ASRM there's obviously the online course catalog, webinars, med talks, getting your FNS each month, looking at different textbooks, but give them specific examples of textbooks that you've used. And there's also some great resources online on YouTube where you can learn about different topics.

If you have a shorter amount of time, I actually really like to point out to people that podcasts are a great way to learn information. So FNS on air has the review of the monthly journal and that can go just, you know, on your to and from ride to work. You're also looking at different podcasts that are more the patient perspective, but it gives insight to what your patients are going through.

There is up to date, also remind them that you can do category one CME credits for just searching information on up to date. And then on social media, there's lots of different resources. Making sure that everyone is aware of all the different conferences that are available and how to get involved.

So once you really have your practice down pat, I think it's important that you start to branch out and look at things outside of your practice. There's a whole world of APPs that are working in fertility outside of your group. So it gives a wonderful opportunity through the ASRM APP professional group to just talk with other people who are doing the same thing as you, but at different practices.

Another thing I really like to do is to make sure you're learning from each other. So we have this thing at our practice called Fascinomas, where we have these really interesting cases and it's just good teaching moments to make sure that when you see something really interesting or different or something out of the norm, you just remember to email your group, whether you've been at a practice for four months or you've been there for 14 years. So it's really helpful to just make sure that you're sharing your knowledge and when you see something really interesting to share it with everyone.

Another idea I would like to have is team building. So it's a lot, it helps to form your relationships with each other when you go to meet outside of the office. So I know it sounds like dating, but it really helps.

And this is hard with telework because people who telework, you don't see each other in person as much anymore. And you know, everyone makes mistakes because we're all human. But if you have that face-to-face time, I feel like you give each other grace a lot more and you're like, no, no worries, we'll figure it out.

Versus someone you just see remotely, when something goes wrong, you just have a lot less grace for being able to be patient with that person. So working on that team building and that personal relationship with people in your practice is really important. I think goal-setting next with your mentor should be a great idea, talking about one and five-year goals, different things you want to get involved in, just to bounce ideas off of.

It's a really good practice just to make sure you don't feel like you're a lone chip. And the last thing I like to do is just talk about the organization of all your documents because there's a lot involved between having your different practices. And if you're in different states, there's different licenses.

I personally work in two different states, so there are different licenses, different CME requirements, my DEA license. So I like to show people how I keep track of all that. It's an Excel spreadsheet and it has the different expiration dates for each license, when they're up, when they need to be renewed, how much they cost.

And it just makes it a little easier each year to just run through it and be like, okay, this year I need to update this, this year I need to update this. And then the other type of organization is when everyone has their bad day, which you will, and you feel like you just can't do anything right. I do like to have a folder in my email that's called the Sunshine Folder.

And I wish I could take credit for it, but it was a nurse that helped onboard me almost 12 years ago. And when someone emails you, you did a great job, I really appreciated all the time you spent on this, to just kind of throw it in a folder. And when you're having that really bad day, just to kind of open it and be like, oh, look, I am doing good.

And the same token, if someone sends you like a card, a patient, a thank you, I just like to tuck them away in my drawer in my office and remind myself that, you know, when you forget that you're doing lots of really great work and it's hard, but just to remind yourself when you're feeling down. That's all I have. And thank you very much.