My time during my ambulatory care rotation was such a great experience that it currently is one of my favorite rotations so far. Prior to PA school, I worked at an urgent care as a medical scribe where I learned the tools that helped me during my school. I had the pleasure of working with various PAs, where each one would teach me something new each shift. I will say that I learned a great deal and was able to see more urgent cases that kept me interested that I was not able to experience to its full potential in my previous rotation in family medicine. These would range from making sure I ask about hand dominance, types of medications that I would treat certain diseases with and hands on procedures like suturing, cerumen impactions of ears.

One of the cases that struck out to me was on a 90-year-old male patient that had hearing loss due to a severe buildup of cerumen in both of his ears. He was stating that the decrease in hearing started to affect his daily life to the point where he could not hear his family and needed help. Once I checked his ears and realized both were impacted, I grabbed the ear cleaning kit with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and warm water and cleaned to the best of my ability. A lot of the wax managed to come out with the irrigation and afterwards, I was able to visualize the tympanic membrane on each side. Once most of the cerumen was removed, he was extremely grateful and happy that he could again hear clearly and have conversations with his family. It’s interactions like this that make me feel like I’m making a difference in people’s lives and makes me happy that I decided to become a future PA and have an honor in helping others in need.