Senior Brayden Gerrie and Professor Elizabeth Holbrook recently had an article published in the International Journal of Exercise Science. The article is titled The Evolutionary Role of Physician Assistances Across The United States, Canada, And The United Kingdom and looks at the evolution of the Physician Assistant (PA) position from the perspective of healthcare systems in those countries. It also gives an outline of the educational requirements, projected student debt-to income ratios, as well as position availability.
Brayden started work on this article as an alternate option for May Term when he did an internship this past summer with Dr. Lintner and his PA in Houston, TX. “My interest in becoming a PA after graduating from Roanoke is really what motivated me to undertake this entire project. Being an injury prone Canadian that has travelled to a few different countries and attended school in Canada, NZ and the US, I have had the opportunity to get a glimpse of how each healthcare system works. My reason for choosing the countries that I did is because they seem to be where PAs have had, or could have the biggest impact.” Brayden explains.
Brayden began working on the article over the summer during his internship as well as throughout the fall semester with his faculty sponsor Dr. Holbrook. After editing and revising, an original draft of the article was submitted to the Journal and the editors expressed interest in publishing for their upcoming Journal publication. Brayden expressed that they “were very excited but knew that if it was going to be published that some portions of the paper should be edited or added to so that the best possible paper would be published.”
This was Brayden’s first experience with research at Roanoke and of his faculty sponsor he states that: “Dr. Holbrook was a tremendous help with the entire project. Her experience with so many publications was really what made the difference between this paper going from a word document on my desktop to a publication in a journal. Working with Dr. Holbrook really gave me some tremendous insight as to how and what goes into a published article. We corresponded by email over the summer and when I came back in the fall we met over a series of meetings to discuss the editing process. I am truly lucky to have had her as a teacher over the past four years. She seems to have an endless energy towards anything she is teaching or working on and I cannot thank her enough for her effort, input and especially patience throughout the entire project.”
For students considering doing research, Brayden advises that “if you are interested at all in a topic or career path and wish to do research, all you have to do is ask. The professors here are more than willing to help you along the way. When I asked Dr. Holbrook to sponsor me for this project, she may have been more excited than I was and I have no doubt that most other professors at this school feel the same way.”
Check out Brayden’s article here: https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/ijes/vol6/iss1/1/