By Jennifer Violette, PA-C, MSPA, DFAAPA
Medicine is a calling, or at least this is what one is often told upon entering the health professions. But what happens when the way we live out that calling changes? I knew I wanted to go into medicine after my sophomore year of high school. I completed my biology course and excelled in it to the extent that my teacher encouraged me to take the SAT 2 test as a sophomore. I never considered science as a career option until that point, but one thing I did know from my Catholic upbringing and education was that whatever I ultimately decided for my future profession, I wanted to have a positive influence in the world and help people.
I completed my undergraduate studies at Providence College and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Biology. Immediately after, I completed my Master of Science in Physician Assistant at Seton Hall University. I absolutely love being a physician assistant/physician associate (PA)! It is an exciting, challenging, and intellectually stimulating career that requires a commitment to lifelong learning and improvement. In addition, there are often moments where you can definitively say you helped save a life. For example, I had a patient present to my outpatient facility with symptoms that clearly indicated he had suffered a stroke. I instantly sent him to the emergency room where my findings were confirmed. A few weeks later, he returned to my office to have a post-discharge follow-up with my supervising physician, when I happened to pass by the receptionist’s desk while he was checking out. I said hello and he said, “Thank you Dr. Violette for saving my life.” After quickly reminding him that I am not, in fact, a physician, but a PA, I felt grateful knowing that I helped, even in my small way.
Choosing the PA profession was a conscious decision I made during my undergraduate years. While at Providence, I worked as a student athletic trainer to gain further medical experience. Often, medical residents would rotate through the training room with the team doctor to gain exposure to orthopedics and sports medicine. In speaking with many of these residents, particularly female medical residents, I heard candidly about how long and arduous a commitment to becoming a doctor is and how, if I wanted to get married and have children, becoming a doctor would be challenging.
I grew up believing women could have a successful career and family, but I also had a strong sense that motherhood was part of my vocation, which is why speaking to these female medical residents made me pause and reflect on what I really wanted my future to look like. It was also during my undergraduate time that I learned about the PA profession; it was billed by my health professions advisor as a way to practice medicine, but with more flexibility regarding scheduling, that is, a better option to balance both career and family.
Three years after graduating from PA school, I got married. Three years after that, I had my first child, and three years after that, I had my second child. Initially, balancing home and work life seemed very doable. The kids were in daycare, and the hours complemented a working family lifestyle. Things started to change, however, when my oldest son started kindergarten. At the time, there were little to no options for after-school care in my area, and we did not have family available to help. As a result, I modified my work schedule to meet the demands of the school day, thinking I solved the problem. This solution failed to consider early dismissal days, snow days, or the random call from the school nurse to pick up my sick child. It was also around this time that my younger child was diagnosed with unilateral sensorineural hearing loss and was undergoing a myriad of tests and workups to determine the etiology. When he was no longer getting benefit from his hearing aid, our only viable option was to pursue cochlear implantation. However, at the time, the only place near us performing unilateral cochlear implantation was NYU. Thus, we began driving a minimum of two and a half hours each way from our home to New York City for various appointments, the surgery, and post-op appointments for the following year. I quickly realized during this time that working full time was no longer an option. I was already working part-time to accommodate my kindergartner, but now, even that was not an option. I subsequently started working per-diem in urgent care as I felt a strong desire to keep my clinical skills sharp and maintain my clinical knowledge.
After a few years of per-diem work, things started to settle down at home, and I felt ready to jump back into full-time work. I started teaching at a local PA program. While the position was rewarding and a chance to impart my medical knowledge on future PAs, it often required a lot more time and effort in preparation outside of school. In addition, just when I thought I was getting the hang of teaching, the COVID pandemic struck. I learned to quickly pivot from conventional teaching methods to find creative ways to keep the program and the student cohorts moving forward. In the early days of the pandemic, schools were closed and children were forced to distance-learn from home. Moreover, if a person in a classroom tested positive for COVID, the entire class was quarantined for two weeks. Trying to adapt to the new educational model, I hired two babysitters that could oversee my children to make sure they logged on to their virtual learning lessons while my husband and I headed to work. In addition to full-time teaching, I was still working per-diem clinically. Balancing work and home life during this period was such a struggle that I look back now and wonder how we did it!
In 2023, my husband and I made the decision to move our children from public school to parochial school. It was also around Labor Day of this same year that my mother entered hospice care for stage IV renal cell carcinoma. I knew both things would require a lot of extra time and attention, but I also knew that it was important to be available to my children and to my mother. Consequently, I made the decision to step away from clinical practice. To be honest, I did not wrestle with my decision as much as I thought I would because my family has always been my top priority. Naturally, the need to be present was much more pressing in the case of my mother, but I also did not want to look back when my children were grown-up and discover that I missed the important moments in their life.
What did I gain from this change? I was able to help my children adjust to their new schools from an academic and social perspective, I was able to get more involved at my kids’ schools and with their activities, and I was able to spend more time with my mother, including being at her bedside when she passed away. Furthermore, I recognized that while caring for the sick and helping others was and is important to me, not only as a clinician, but also as a Catholic. Yet I found myself asking: how can I authentically live out this calling when I am not fully living it out at home with the people I care about most?
As Catholics, we frequently talk about life after death and how death is only the beginning of our life with Christ. With my mother’s passing, I had a lot of time to reflect on this, and it gave me a new perspective on my life. I started thinking, “When I reach the end of my life and I’m facing my final judgment, how do I want to be remembered?” While I may have helped a few patients throughout my career, how many will truly recall what I did? It is my hope that my family remembers me for how I showed my love for them and how I shared my time and talents with them. So, while becoming a PA felt like my ultimate calling, through the years, I have discerned that my true calling, or my call from God to holiness, was so much more. Stepping away from clinical practice does not mean abandoning one’s vocation but rather discerning how God is asking one to live out that vocation in a particular season of life. Of course, this discernment will look different for each person and take many forms. In the end, the greatest lesson that I am still learning is that one’s vocational path is not always straightforward or what we envisioned, but the key is to be open to where God is calling us next.
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