In this episode, Rachel introduces her podcast for physician assistants (PA-C, physician associates) and invites you to imagine: what would a beautiful PA life look like to you? Rachel shares her own struggles with balancing work and personal life and feeling burnt out. She emphasizes the importance of self-care and offers tools and resources to prevent burnout. She also shares a quiz called 'How Full Is Your Cup?' that helps assess burnout levels.
Impactful episode quotes:
Hello and welcome to a beautiful PA life podcast. I am so delighted that you are here. In this podcast, I am going to bring you evidence -based practices, tools, tips, mindset shifts, expert interviews, and share my own personal experience and vulnerable experiences that I've had as a PA throughout my career. All with the goal of imagining
what a beautiful PA life look like. I want to thank you for being here. It is so special to me that you're here listening to this podcast. And I know that you're here because you also believe in a beautiful PA life. You believe that you can love your career and love being a PA and also have a beautiful, fulfilling and exciting life outside of the hospital.
I want you to love your career and love your life. That is my dream for you and for me as well. This is my very first episode and I'm so grateful that we get to share this space. Your support means so much to me. So thank you for listening. I want to share a little bit about myself. I am a Texas girl living my best life in San Diego, California. I've been a PA for over a decade.
I practice in pediatric oncology, hematology, stem cell transplant in the inpatient setting. And I love caring for this patient population. They are so special to me. They are such a vulnerable and special and unique patient population. And I so often, when I get the question of what do you do as a PA and I
the area that I work in in pediatric oncology, the question that I always get after that is, how do you do it? How do you manage it? How can you do that? That be so hard. That must be so sad. And maybe you have had this question too. Maybe you work in the ICU, maybe you work in the emergency department, maybe you work in trauma surgery or another very emotionally draining
Rachel La Costa (she/her) (04:02.552)
high energy field. And maybe you also get that question of how do you do it? How do you manage? And I'll be honest with you. It has not been easy. It has not been easy. I have struggled a lot in my career as a PA. I've really struggled with balancing it all, feeling fully present for my patients and being prepared for rounds, managing.
patient emergencies and amongst all of that chaos, trying to find time for myself to take care of myself and my own needs. And through this struggle, it has left me feeling so much exhaustion and completely drained and feelings of self -doubt and frustration at the system and at the even feeling resentful
my team resentful at the system, resentful at the medical record, resentful at all of these things that were holding me back from being the PA that I wanted to be for my patients. And, you know, I found myself even lacking empathy because of all the struggle that I felt in my career.
And navigating so many pressures in the healthcare system is so challenging. It's so challenging. I felt like I was failing. I felt like a failure. felt self doubt. I felt like I wasn't being good enough for my patients and I certainly wasn't showing up for myself. you know, particularly in the pandemic, this became came so,
much heavier, so much more difficult and challenging for me. I was given more and more patients to take care of each shift. So that was so stressful and made me so anxious and nervous. And the pandemic was in full force and the patients were getting sicker and sicker. And my colleagues, they were leaving for other jobs and the team was getting more and more short staffed.
Rachel La Costa (she/her) (06:27.054)
pressure just kept building. It wasn't getting any better. It wasn't getting easier. And each shift seemed more difficult than the last. Felt more challenging, more daunting, more scary. And, you know, I was going to therapy. I was trying to do for myself what I knew how to do, but it just
cutting it. And one morning I was getting ready for work and doing my morning face routine and I caught my eye in the mirror. for once I actually really looked at myself in the mirror and the woman that I saw in the mirror, she was not okay. She was not okay.
She was suffering. She was running completely on empty. Her cup was running on empty. And despite all the coffee that I was drinking, that was not filling my cup in a way that was meaningful or impactful for myself or for my patients. And I realized that I was not showing up for my patients as the PA that I could be, that I wanted to
for my patients. And, you know, the system was not supporting me. The system was not supporting my colleagues. The system was not supporting my patients in the way that I had hoped that it would be. The system's not designed to support us. You know, we're the frontline workers providing the actual care to the patients. And we were not being, I was not being supported
by the system. I thought to myself as I was looking in the mirror, do I need to go on medication? What do I need? Do I, is that, should I? And I thought to myself, if I were treating my patient, what would I tell my patient? If my patient was coming to me, what would I, advice would I give to them? And
Rachel La Costa (she/her) (08:55.99)
All of a sudden, it was like, came to me. Rachel, you're a highly skilled PA. What would you tell your patient? Why can I not take great care of myself? I'm a highly skilled, intelligent, successful PA. Why am I struggling with taking care of myself?
Oh, it was such a realization that I had in that moment that I needed to become my own patient. I knew that I needed to make a change because I needed to show up for that six -year -old patient with relapsed leukemia who was undergoing a bone marrow transplant. And I needed to be my best self for the 16 -year -old soccer player who could no longer play soccer because
they were diagnosed with osteosarcoma and had to have an above the knee amputation. I needed to be the best PA that I could be to show up for them, to be there for them, to provide the support that they need and that I have the ability to give to them in my practice as a PA.
And by the way, as I was going through all of this, my personal life outside the hospital was completely blowing up. I was going through a very emotionally draining and messy divorce. I didn't speak to my best friend for an entire year. I was struggling in my relationships with my family. I was hiding a secret that I was too scared to share.
I was lying to myself about everything. I was living a lie. I was putting forth this facade that was not my authentic self. That I was putting forth a facade that everything was fine, but I was not okay on the inside. I felt like a failure. I felt broken. I felt so alone.
Rachel La Costa (she/her) (11:17.292)
And I didn't have a choice. I had to change, but I want to make sure that you always have a choice. I believe that you can serve the patients you love without losing yourself. I believe that we deserve to serve the patients that we love without losing ourselves. And that is my definition.
of a beautiful PA life. I figured out some ways to make a change. I put together a toolkit of resources and tools and techniques and strategies to pull myself out of the darkest days of my life. And I started to share this with other PAs, with other PAs who were struggling just like I was.
Unfortunately, I was not unique. I am not unique. I know that you also are struggling in your career. You're struggling with the exact same things that I've struggled with. And these tools and resources, they worked for me. They worked for my friends and colleagues, and I know they'll work for you too. And that's why I'm here today. I...
am dedicating this podcast to you. I am a PA who has experienced the depths of despair in my career. And I want to prevent you from having lows like that. I've done it all in my career. I have worked clinically. I have been PA faculty. I have my doctorate degree. I have published research.
am a keynote speaker. I've done it all. And I want to bring all of this knowledge, tools, and expertise that I have and pay it forward to you because I deserve, I believe that you deserve that. You deserve to have a career that is beautiful and fulfilling and a life that is beautiful, exciting, and that you can leave your shift.
Rachel La Costa (she/her) (13:43.614)
Every day, check out of the hospital and check into a beautiful life that you are just so joyful to have. That's why I'm here for you. I'm here to help you to create your own beautiful PA life. I'm bringing these tools to you every week at zero cost on this podcast because I believe you deserve it. My podcast will launch
Sunday at midnight. And my thought behind that was that I know that you're going into your week anxious and nervous and worried about the week ahead. And if I can inject a little bit of positivity, a little bit of some science, a little bit of some tools that you can implement as you're going into your work week, then that my job is done.
I want to give you these tools super accessible to you, completely free to change your life and your career. Maybe you're feeling some, some nervousness in your career that burnout might be around the corner. Maybe you are worried that, did I make the right choice becoming a PA? I don't.
I don't know what to do. I feel stuck. feel unsatisfied. I feel unfulfilled. I feel so burned out. I feel so worn down by my career. If you're feeling that way, you're in the right place. I am here for you. I am paying forward this knowledge to you. And I'm here to be in it with you every step of the way. I've felt your struggles. I've felt your struggles. You're not alone. I am here with
I have something very special for you that I want to share. I have created a quiz. So maybe you're wondering, I think I might be feeling some signs of burnout. I think I might be feeling, I just don't feel okay. Just like me looking in the mirror, I saw that I was not okay. I have a quiz for you. It's called How Full Is Your Cup? And it is a quiz that's gonna tell
Rachel La Costa (she/her) (16:06.062)
Where are you right now along that spectrum of burnout? How full or how empty is your cup right now? And it's a super quick quiz, only 10 questions. Take the quiz and you'll get your results and some tips that you can implement to fill your cup right now. And the quiz is available to you completely free. Just go to my Instagram page which is @rachel.la.costa and you get find it in the link in bio. You can get this quiz and I know it's going to be so meaningful for you to have an objective metric of where am I right now in how full my cup is and how can I fill my cup for myself and for my patients. I want to take a moment before ending this episode to say thank
so much for being here. This first episode is the first step in a journey that we're taking together. And I'm so happy and grateful to have you by my side in this journey. We are going to do this together. This podcast exists for you. It exists to help you to have a better life, to have a beautiful life, to love being a PA.
and to love the life that you have. These tips and tools are not what you learned in PA school. We do not teach these things, unfortunately, but you can find them here. I believe that together we can change the culture of healthcare. I believe we can do it together. And I want to have you along this ride with me.
Together we can create a beautiful PA life. I believe it, I believe it for you and I believe it for me. I have one request if you could please do me a huge favor. If you know a colleague, a PA that you work with that you think might be struggling too, could you share this episode with them? I wanna make sure that we can help every PA that is struggling.
Rachel La Costa (she/her) (18:24.894)
And sharing this episode with them helps to give them access to the free resources that I'm sharing with you. It would mean the world to me if you could take what you learned and share that with somebody else. And you can do that as easily as clicking share episode in your favorite podcast app. I want to thank you so much for being here. I'm so delighted to be on this journey with you. Thank you so much for your time.
and have a beautiful day, PA friend. Take care. Bye.
Physician assistant, physician associate, PA-C, PA student