Introducing Zach Hare, Academic Coordinator

In this month’s episode of The Well, hosts Mary and Leanne continue their faculty spotlight series with Zach Hare, Academic Coordinator for Mount St. Mary’s PA Program.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Well, Mount St. Mary's PA Programs podcast, which is a source of insight, inspiration, and growth for future PAs. As always, I am one of your co-hosts and honored to be our program director of the PA program, Mary Jackson, and I have with me our associate program director, Leanne Hedges. Hi, everyone, welcome back. And today we're continuing on our series to introduce our amazing and dynamic faculty and staff team. And today we are honored to have Dr. Zach Hare with us, who's our academic coordinator. So welcome, Zach.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Hey, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

So our listeners probably have a lot of questions, but I'd love to hear what initially drew you to the profession and what you've done with your PA career so far.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

So yeah, what drew me to the profession is, you know, as a young, you know, man and stuff like that, I wanted to go something into healthcare and I didn't know what. So I joined the military and I was a hospital corpsman for many years. And as I progress on through my enlisted career in the military, uh I was an independent duty corpsman where the PA profession came out of. Um so it was a natural progression uh to apply for IPAP, which is a military PA program, and become a PA. Um, and my total time was 18 years enlisted, 33 years altogether military time. Um so 17 years as a PA. Um, and I just love it and have done many, many things over the years, many opportunities. That's one of the blessings of being a PA is we can rapidly change and do different things. So I've done trauma, emergency medicine, um, surgery, critical care, uh, neurocritical care, primary care. I've done medical acupuncture, so I've just been offered so many opportunities as a PA to do different things in medicine.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

That's amazing. I love hearing you in our open houses and when we're talking to students because not only have you done so much and seen so much, you've had so many opportunities for leadership. Do you mind sharing a little bit about your opportunities in leadership with us?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, uh in the military I've deployed multiple times. And one of the things uh when I first was a PA deploying with uh 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, um, I was what they called a battalion surgeon. Now, this is typically a position only filled by uh physicians. Um, so I was one of the first PAs to actually fill that role. Uh so 30 of you know corpsmen and stuff that we went uh as we said, going downrange, going, you know, to overseas uh spots and stuff. Uh and then I did the same thing when I was with um MarSOC, so the Marine Corps Special Forces, I was a battalion surgeon there also, and I was the first PA to ever deploy from Marsock, and historically, in their you know, 10 years of existence at that time, they had never deployed a PA independently by themselves. Um so I broke that glass ceiling also. Um and then I went to uh Sicily, and while I was in Sicily, I was the uh director for branch clinics. So I was a hospital director. I had three clinics in three different countries, one in Sicily, one in Greece, and one in the Kingdom of Bahrain, um, and had multiple people working for me over 150 at one time, um, from dentists to doctors to corpsmen to nurses, um, to being an administrator in that. Um, so yeah, there's there's no, you know, the sky's the limit as being a PA, what you can and can't do.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

That's amazing. I think that you embody that more than any other PA that I've ever met. So really impressive.

SPEAKER_02 3:38

What advice would you give for our listeners if they're in the military now, thinking about potentially pursuing a career as a PA? Like who do they talk to? How do they start that process?

SPEAKER_00 3:48

So, yeah, uh there's you know, uh medical service corps is what we fall under. There's 32 different specialties that you know kind of blend together in that. Um, and PA is one of them. So find out a medical service corps uh officer if you want to get into uh the PA or any of the other kind of you know branches that aren't, you know, doctor, dentist, or nurse, um, and that'll kind of get you in the door from that. And you can talk to other PAs. There's you know plenty of them out there that you know you'd want to talk to from the Navy to the Army, um, reach out to the Inter Service Physician Assistant Program, IPAP. Um, they talk to some of the people at the schoolhouse there um to just kind of figure everything out. And then your local recruiters. Um so there's officer recruiters, a lot of people come in. Uh I just did some interviews for people for the uh scholarships for the military, so that way they can get PA school paid for uh or at least a big chunk of change as you're going through.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Yeah, I remember you sharing that at an open house because I was talking about all the loans that I came out with and you didn't. So many, many reasons to serve, but that's certainly something that draws, I think, young students.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

Can you tell our listeners a little bit about what you're going to be doing in our program, what you're going to teach and the role that you play here?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

So, yeah, uh so as the academic uh you know coordinator in that, it's a lot of making sure that uh things behind the scenes as we have guest lectures come in uh flow uh even and smoothly. I'll be teaching a bit of the fundamentals of science. Um, we're having a lot of our cohort from the scientists from the science community come in and teaching the basic cell things, but at the very beginning I'll be doing radiology and lab. Um, and then from then on uh we start getting into the the medicine part of it. So I'll be teaching a lot of the medicine courses for the second and third uh semester in that um and kind of what we do on a daily basis and all the different disease processes we do.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

I always think of clinical medicine as like the heart and soul of PA school, and you're teaching both of those courses.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

I think our students are so lucky to have you as such a foundational instructor. I feel the same way, Lee and I remember being in PA school and Clint Med was the highest credited class. It was the most time that we spent with someone, and it really helped you to orient yourself in medicine as a generalist. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about what drew you to the mount and what you're excited about with this incoming cohort.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Well, yeah, what drew me to the mount was uh part of it, you know, I was just retiring from the military and I was working in the emergency department, kind of seeing what I wanted to do. And I wanted to get somewhere into education because uh, again, I have a long history in medicine and that, um, but it's starting time too, I got to train my replacement. Who's gonna be the next one that's gonna take care of me when I get older? Um, so I want to make sure that you know we have good foundational uh training for uh the next PA cohorts and that. And I think also one of my things in my career uh throughout the military was always we've never done this before. This is the first time we've ever tried something. So getting in a PA program that's you know foundational from the beginning, I think is great to get into. And then a lot of the other kind of uh things we have baked into the curriculum on how to you know self-care and care for yourself uh really resonates with me because working with the military and working with, you know, being in places where you use the deep breathing exercises, you use, you know, um guided meditation, I've used, you know, Chai Chi, uh Qi Gong, all that kind of stuff to keep myself grounded so uh when I was deployed and calm myself down on that. So I think those are great things to use and utilize um as we move forward uh in healthcare.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

That's amazing to hear. And I think our students will really benefit from learning from a lot of different individuals who've used some of these techniques, all of these techniques in different contexts. So that's amazing. And we are really jazzed about this cohort. I think we're I'm sure you are as well, having gone through the admissions process. They're just amazing, the things that they're already doing so young in their lives and in their careers. I can't wait to have this cohort join us.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

And Zach, I always love hearing about your past. I always learn something new every single time. It's so interesting.

unknown 8:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Well, we always like to close with asking: is there a seed that you would like to plant with future generations of healthcare leaders? So what seed would you like to plant?

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Yeah, I think, you know, uh thinking about this question, you kind of prepositioned a little bit. And with my history and stuff, leadership uh is definitely, you know, one of the seeds I want to plant. Uh a lot of PAs, when they get out there, they want to go in, they want to work clinically, and they don't think that, hey, I can do, you know, I don't want to, I'm not at the table, I'm not, you know, administrator and stuff, but they really need to, you know, start thinking about that in the future because to make sure our profession is a profession and maintains um, you know, kind of everything that we need to do in the future, we need to have PAs at the table. Um, and one of the things, you know, the the real big thing is, you know, my leadership was always style was a servant leadership style, um, working with others. And leadership's not about titles, it's not about hierarchy, it's about influence, it's about integrity and impact, and especially service to others. So I really want to, you know, kind of draw at home that, hey, even if you're not in charge, you can still be a leader in service to others.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

I love that. I feel like we've spent a lot of time, especially recently, thinking about the importance of teaching advocacy in the PA program, right? We can't just, it's a fantastic profession, but it is because we are standing on the backs of those who fought for this profession. We need to continue to advocate for the profession. And I think the seed about leadership is perfect. I love when PAs see themselves as the leaders that they are, as influential with their patients in their communities, in their healthcare systems. Um, I can't wait to see what our PAs do when they they get into these leadership positions.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

All right, well, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you all for listening. And we can't wait to meet you back at the well.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

All right, thanks.