Education Spotlight: Ten years after graduation, a PA continues to live the mission

Posted Apr 13, 2009

Ten years ago, Sheridan Tarnasky, PA-C, was finishing up her degree in Physician Assistant studies at the OHSU School of Medicine. But Tarnasky was nowhere near Portland as she headed toward graduation.

“I was in Bend, Corvallis, Albany, Depoe Bay, Hermiston…I can’t even remember where else. We had five-week rotations all over the state,” Tarnasky recalled. “You got such a variety, because everyone has their own way of practicing. By going to different communities and seeing what they had there, I learned how to practice in several different situations.”

Tarnasky, along with all members of the School’s Physician Assistant Program, embarked on a 14-month stretch of rotations in rural communities. The Physician Assistant Program was designed this way to achieve its mission: “to prepare physician assistants to provide primary care services to the medically underserved in rural and urban Oregon.” This mission is grounded in the 1992 origins of the program when the Oregon Legislature provided start-up funding.

Ted Ruback, Director of the PA program, developed a curriculum which differed from many other programs across the country. “We wanted to train our PAs to provide care to the medically underserved, including in rural and urban locations,” he said.

The 26-month PA program was (and still is) divided into two parts: the first 12 months spent primarily in lectures and laboratories at the Marquam Hill campus and the following 14 months in five-week clinical rotations. Tarnasky, 59, left her home in Heppner, Ore., to begin classes in Portland as a member of OHSU’s second class of physician assistants. Today, Tarnasky, a former ER nurse, is a practicing physician assistant in Heppner. “She is living the mission,” said Ruback. “Our students are doing their part in addressing the workforce needs of Oregon.”