‘Knowing your worth’ can help physician assistants deal with bias in medicine
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Key takeaways:
- Amanda Michaud, DMSc, PA-C, AE-C, juggles her role as a PA in allergy and immunology with her passion for coaching hockey.
- Michaud encourages women in allergy to find their voice and understand their worth.
In every domain of her life, Amanda Michaud, DMSc, PA-C, AE-C, strives to help uplift fellow women, from encouraging other female physician assistants to recognize their worth to helping young girls to develop their hockey skills.
“The field is growing so much that really any female PA or physician, especially in allergy, should have no problem getting the job that they want,” Michaud told Healio. “You do deserve a seat at the table.”
Michaud works as a physician assistant (PA) at Family Allergy & Asthma Consultants (FAAC) in Jacksonville, Florida, and is CME chair of the Association of PAs in Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. She holds committee appointments with the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology and the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology and is a member of Healio’s Allergy/Asthma Peer Perspective Board.
Healio spoke with Michaud to hear more about her career path, how she finds time to continue to practice her passion of ice hockey, and how she makes it her mission to uplift women in all realms of her life.
Walking the path
In 2012, Michaud graduated from Midwestern University’s Physician Assistant program. After graduation, she began an emergency medicine fellowship at a practice in Virginia.
“I loved the intensity and thrived on it, and I thought I found what I wanted to do, but I also was taking a lot of work home with me,” Michaud said. “There’s certain things that school does not prepare you for, like the loss of life and the stressors of that.”
Looking for a change, Michaud applied for a job posting for an allergy group that was recommended by her professor.
The physicians at this outpatient private practice, who were both involved in the academic setting, took Michaud under their wing, she said.
Michaud acknowledges that this training played a key role in shaping her appreciation for the field of allergy/immunology.
“I look back and if it wasn’t for the way that they trained me to appreciate the science in this rapidly evolving field and how to practice evidence-based medicine, I don’t think I would like it as much as I do,” Michaud told Healio.
After next working in Scottsdale, Arizona, for a few years, Michaud moved to Florida in 2021 and joined FAAC, where she currently practices.
“Now I've been in three different allergy practices and I will never leave. I have devoted my career to the specialty and I just love it too much,” Michaud told Healio.
Michaud can also share in the patient perspective, having been diagnosed with a peanut allergy, allergic rhinitis and eosinophilic esophagitis. She believes that her personal experience with allergies makes her a good fit for her position and allows her to access greater sympathy for her patients, she said.
While navigating this career path and working as a PA, Michaud also received her doctorate in 2022 from University of Lynchburg, which she sees as her top accomplishment.
“I felt strongly about getting my doctorate and having that terminal degree for my field,” she told Healio.
Michaud is also proud of her repeated invitations to speak at meetings. This month, she is again speaking at the ACAAI Annual Scientific Meeting, which she has previously attended as faculty since 2018. She also worked with a coalition of PAs and nurse practitioners on the October 2023 issue of Physician Assistant Clinics, which focused entirely on allergy and immunology, a project she describes as outside of her typical wheelhouse and a fun challenge.
Uplifting the next generation
When Michaud is not working in the clinic, she is working on the ice as a girls’ hockey coach helping to raise “good humans,” she told Healio.
Growing up in Maine, Michaud started playing hockey when she was around 12 years old. “There wasn’t a lot of opportunity for girls back then, even where I grew up,” she noted.
She played hockey in college and then served as a coach for a variety of youth programs while attending graduate school.
After moving to Florida, Michaud helped to develop the Jacksonville Lunas Hockey Club at the Community First Igloo facility, which is the first and only all-girls hockey program in Northeast Florida, according to information from the National Hockey League Coaches' Association (NHLCA) website. Since then, she has become the head coach of the club.
Michaud coaches girls aged 6 years and older, but said she especially enjoys working with her team of girls aged 13 and 14 years.
“That’s where we see the biggest drop-off with female athletes in every sport,” she said. “They stop playing around that age and there’s many reasons why. One is availability of teams to play for and access. Another is related to mental health and body image issues.”
Michaud hopes that this league is a step toward increasing accessibility to hockey for girls and teaching them empowerment at a vulnerable time in their lives.
“It all comes down to just showing the girls that they can do whatever they want,” she said.
Michaud also recently became a member of the NHLCA Female Coaches Program, which strives to teach important skills and leadership strategies to women coaches and provide them with networking and career advancement opportunities, according to the NHLCA website.
“It’s about promoting more diversity and inclusion in the sport,” Michaud told Healio. “Just like in allergy, you can expect that in a sport dominated by men, the assumption is that female coaches ‘don’t know what we’re doing,’ when in reality we devote a lot of time to studying the game.”
Michaud hopes that the program will help her to develop as a coach and show young women hockey players that they can follow any career path.
“They belong there, and they can do anything they want,” she said.
Finding a seat at the table
Although she thoroughly enjoys her career, Michaud noted that a lack of a formal training curriculum for PAs in allergy, different practices across clinics and inappropriate usage of PAs can make the job difficult.
PAs across medicine also often face bias from patients, caregivers and even other clinicians as being “less than” a fellowship-trained physician.
“One of the biggest challenges that can face PAs is the fact that we are not fellowship trained like our physician colleagues and, naturally, this does create bias for some patients,” Michaud told Healio. “With our experience and training, we may be able to handle any patient who walks through that clinic door, but ultimately some patients may prefer seeing physicians over PAs —and that’s OK. It’s important to recognize that PAs are part of the health care team and should be utilized appropriately to improve access to patient care.”
This effect of this discrimination is potentially multiplied by the gender bias practitioners such as Michaud and other women allergists may experience.
“We deal with female provider bias on a regular basis,” Michaud said.
Women clinicians across medicine should understand their worth as a valuable team member and express what they need to be a better provider, according to Michaud.
“A lot of us have imposter syndrome. Understanding that you do deserve a seat at the table, knowing your worth, and not being afraid to ask for what you think you deserve is crucial,” she said. “Having those discussions can be very difficult sometimes. It can be difficult to ask for what you think you deserve, especially as a new allergist or a new PA.
“Know that you belong there and that you have a voice,” she added.
Reference:
- NHL Female Coaches spotlight. https://www.nhlcoaches.com/nhlca-female-coaches-spotlight/. Accessed Sept. 6, 2024.
For more information:
Amanda Michaud, DMSc, PA-C, AE-C, can be reached at amandalmichaud@gmail.com; Twitter: @theallergypac.