V e were putting all our eggs in one basket, handful of pre- requisites I was h olding onto to take wherever we moved but it worked so I am pretty excited to be to." Priddle said. "So I look Anatomy and Phys iology, Microbiology, here ," PA stud ent Amy Priddle said. and Biochemistry h er e. I was really glad I did that because it gave me a Priddle was a wife and mother of really nice insight into the depth of what was expected from us." two children and had worked for years as a paramed ic, but after a while The PA program took 28 months to compl ete with a class starting she wanted more out of her career life. Be ing a pat'amedic only allowed in August and finishing in December two and a half years later . It was Priddle to be with her patients for about an hour and she wanted more. broken down into two phases . The fi r st was the didactic phase, which She started looki~ into going to physicians assistant school somewhere. was made up primarily of classroom training. The second phase was the Her choice. of schools '>Yas narrowed down because they had to be near clinical phase. Through Harding, FA students could do their clinical an air force ba.se for her husband and near a major children's hosp ital phase j ust about anywhere , including other parts of the world. Priddle, and school for the blinN for their special needs.daughter. At the time however , planned to do h er clinical as close to home as possible since Priddle and h er husban~ere stationed in Canada when some fri ends she had a family. She and her class of32 began in August of2009 and recommended Harding to her. It was a risk chOOSing Harding because planned to graduate in December of201l. there were other locations they could have chosen that would have still The directors that Pdddle worked with were impressed by her and mel their needs and would have had more than one PA school, however, her drive to succeed in the program even with th e task of being a mother she was impressed with Harding. of two on her plate . "The quality of the program is exceptional," Pdddle said. '~She is an excellent student," PA clinical director Cary Ht.l said. Being a mother of two young children gave Priddle insight into Dr. Mike Murphy . PA program director agreed saying. "We are all making her decisions to choose Harding and be in the PA program in " t blessed by her example and very glad that she is part of this program at the first place. She said that being a mother has helped her manage her Harding. " time hetter. -. The program may have been hard but Priddle knew that the results 'We figured we should do ~his sooner r ath er than later because [my would be worth it. Even the immediate rewards would he a good change children] won't r emember the crazy time that mom was in school. J bfpace . hope," Priddl e said. "It is hard. The volume of information is a lot to get your head Having been a paramediC since 2001, Priddle came to H arding wi th wrapped around but I know all of us are really excited to get into our an undergraduate degree in psychology. She only needed to take a few clinical year so we can start applying all of this ... but for people that want more classes be fore she could begin the PA program. to do it J would say it is well worth it ," Priddle said. "I made the dec ision to do this eight years ago. and there were just a Steven Chandler 120 people ..
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