Teresa Flores
Champion
of the Underserved
Teresa
Flores and her mother, Martha Flores
Teresa
Flores, Yupik,/Aleut, Martha’s daughter,
has been working as a PA in the same hospital as her
mother since December 2005. Teresa is a member of one of
the teams in the family practice clinic. Her team
includes another PA, a nurse practitioner and three
physicians. Teresa has her own panel of patients.
The remote village of Scammon Bay is also in Teresa's care.
She talks by phone with health aides in Scammon Bay. When
any of the people from the village come to the hospital,
Teresa is the first one that they see. She is trying hard
to convince the hospital that she and the other providers
should visit the villages in their care at least once a
year. “A lot of our patients don’t have the money they need
to come here [to Bethel] from the village. I want to go to
my village and sit and talk with people and say, ‘This is
who I am. I know that you can’t come in and see me, but I
want to try to help you as best as I can.”
A
Long
Journey
Teresa Flores’s
journey into the PA profession was a long process. In high
school, her mother’s busy life caused her to declare that
she never wanted to work in the health care field. Like her
mother, she wanted to help her people, but decided to do so
as an elementary school teacher. While she was working on
her bachelor’s degree in elementary education at the
University of Alaska in Fairbanks, the school of education
lost its accreditation, so Teresa switched to psychology.
Meanwhile every summer when she returned to Bethel, she
worked in the hospital. The first year she did data entry.
Then for several years she assisted specialists, such as
gynecologists and cardiologists, who flew into Bethel to
provide care. She also worked in pediatrics and in the
outpatient clinic. One summer she worked in the mental
health department. All of this work helped her realize that
she wanted to become a PA. So, like her mother, Teresa went
through the MEDEX Northwest
Program.
“I knew that I was coming back to Alaska,” says Flores, “so
I decided to do the whole program in Seattle where I could
get exposed to newer technology and see how mainstream
medicine is run.” Teresa feels that she made the right
decision, but being in the big city was difficult. “I went
from Bethel, where I know most everyone, to Seattle where I
knew no one. Being in Seattle helped me grow personally in
a lot of different ways.”
Wisdom
"Take advantage
of internships and summer programs," Teresa Flores advises.
"That way you get into the system and know whose who and
what’s what. PA school is very intense. You work 60 or 70
hours a week and it’s expensive, so you need to be sure
that it’s what you want to do.
Regardless of whether people choose to be PAs, Flores says,
“In order to get the respect we deserve, we need to go to
school and get educated. The world runs on degrees. If you
don’t graduate from high school, people’s respect for you
falls a lot. Don’t quit school. Find something that you’re
happy with.”
This
article was originally printed in the Winter 2007 issue
of
Winds of Change.