Andrew Baker, PA-C: Navigating a Career of Lifelong Learning

Featured ThriveAP Faculty Discussion: Andrew Baker, PA-C

At ThriveAP we are honored to have an expansive faculty of expert speakers and APPs with impressive credentials and experience. Today we are talking with one of our esteemed faculty members to gain their advice for thriving in an advanced practice career. 

Andrew Baker, PA-C, has led an inspired and varied career path. As a PA-C, Andrew has worked in Reconstructive Plastic Surgery, Emergency Medicine, and Dermatology. He has mentored and coached many PAs and colleagues who were troubled financially. For the first several years as a PA, his interest in preparing for his financial future continued to grow. He realized personal finance is more than making money, saving, paying off debt and investing. Andrew's passion to help others fuels both his areas of expertise. Watch the interview below with Sarah Maxwell, Director of Marketing at ThriveAP and Andrew Baker, PA-C, or read the transcript.

Meet Andrew Baker, PA-C

Interview Transcript

Sarah Maxwell: My name is Sarah Maxwell. I'm the Director of Marketing at ThriveAP. At ThriveAP, we are honored to have an expansive faculty of expert speakers and advanced practice providers with impressive credentials and experience. Today I'm gonna take a few moments to get to know one of our speakers a little bit better and gained some of their advice for thriving in an advanced practice career. Without further ado, thank you and please welcome Andrew Baker.

Andrew Baker, PA-C: Hey Sarah, thanks for this. Appreciate it.

SM: Thank you so much for joining us and obviously from your background, you are a busy person in clinic today. So we're very appreciative you're taking the time to chat with us. I'll just jump right in, and ask you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background. I know we were chatting previously that you have a pretty unique experience, I think, compared to a lot of faculty that we work with. Would love to hear a little bit more about you.

AB: Okay, great. It's always hard to summarize things when you're trying to condense 10 or more years into just a few sentences. But I started my career as a PA in Ohio working at an academic medical facility, the Ohio State Medical Center. This was a wonderful opportunity to kick off my career for a few reasons, one of which I was kind of thrown in with the residents in that program, because believe it or not, 11 years ago, there was not a lot of onboarding solutions for PAs and nurse practitioners.

This really taught me, gave me a high level overview of what I was to be doing in my career as well as training, like one-on-one with residents who had a very stringent couple years of residency. I learned how to do a lot of surgery and sewing, which is what I do a lot of now.

Throughout my career I worked in a few different areas but in the last six years I've worked in dermatology full-time. A lot of what I do currently is a surgical dermatology, and that consists of your run of the mill skin cancers, but also melanomas and deciding how to best treat people with melanoma and skin cancer both surgically and non-surgically.

I also have a big passion for inflammatory skin disease as well. These skin diseases really can burden people's lives and affect their quality of life. I feel very fortunate that the science has advanced to the point that there's so many options for these patients. That's, in a quick nutshell, about my practice and what I do but as a new graduate, when I came out of PA school 11 years ago, I realized I had no idea how I was going to pay back my student loans or really how I was gonna manage any of my income that I was going to be getting now. I felt very ready to and eager to start my career, but I realized I had no plan how to deal with loans, debt, or any of my income.

It was really at that time that I started more self-learning and meeting with financial professionals and getting a better understanding about what decisions I was going to need to have to make in my career. That went on for many years. Some of my PA and NP colleagues, as well as physician colleagues got to know me felt from casual conversations, that turned into more of me helping give them some recommendations about what people should be doing as far as loans, retirement, and so on and so forth. Then in 2018, I decided, I've been a clinician for about six years now. I'm starting to feel comfortable with my clinical skills and I felt that I could just do more for my colleagues.

It was at that time I decided to go back and get my MBA. It was an online degree, which was pre-covid so to me it was a really big change to be a self-learner and doing it on your own, in addition to, family and clinical practice. But in May of 2020, I graduated with the degree and I started working more specifically with PAs and nurse practitioners about financial decision making, earlier career and later career because there's so much to know.

While no one ever claims to know everything, I feel that my experience has really helped me get other people way ahead of the curve and not be digging themselves out of debt throughout their career, so to speak. I love diversifying my skillset and my knowledge and I feel very fortunate to be able to do so.

SM: Absolutely. It is such an interesting, but necessary, area to dive into. I think regardless of if you're in healthcare or not, there's so many people who are coming out of school and they've got these massive student loans and it's, "great, now I'm getting this job, but what do I do next? How do I manage this?" It's definitely one of those areas that is tough to tackle and it's not super clear. It's as clear as mud as they say. It's a difficult area to understand fully, so I think that's something people need more education on.

So would you say that maybe that piece is your greatest passion in your role, or is it still more on the clinical side, or is it a little bit of both?

AB: I would have to say it's both, it'd be difficult to give an exact percentage or number, but at the end of the day I love what I do. Whether it's treating patients with a terrible skin disorder, curing them of cancer through a surgical method, or having a quick conversation with someone to help clarify some of the tough decisions they're going through in their life, it's all part of who I am and what I want to continue to get better at. So it's really great that technology is at the point where I can do all these things in one day. 

"At the end of the day I love what I do. Whether it's treating patients with a terrible skin disorder, curing them of cancer through a surgical method, or having a quick conversation with someone to help clarify some of the tough decisions they're going through in their life, it's all part of who I am and what I want to continue to get better at." - Andrew Baker, PA-C, ThriveAP Faculty

As time goes on I think we all get better at things, and so as time goes on, I hope to continue to get better, and continue to help more people, colleagues, and patients.

SM: And if you had maybe one thing in your in your career that would you say is the most noteworthy or an accomplishment that felt near and dear to your heart, what would that be?

AB: It would definitely be something with patient care because while I want to help as many people as possible, I love surgery. Doing skin surgery and getting better at it and constantly tweaking and modifying how you're doing things to have better patient outcomes and better clearance of skin cancer.

I recently was able to do my 10000th skin surgery, which was probably one of my biggest accomplishments that I would say. It's something that's been over 11 years and I do about 30 plus skin surgeries every week now. So I would say that's just something that didn't happen overnight. I feel very thankful to have the ability to do that and I can't wait to get to 20,000.

SM: That is impressive, congratulations! And casually, you also do all of the financial discussions and then also are part of the ThriveAP faculty. Sounds like you've got tons of time on your hands.

AB: It's all about time management and I think you know that probably as well.

SM: Certainly. So tell us then, what did attract you to become a speaker at ThriveAP and to join our faculty?

AB: Well I think even though it's been a few years for me personally, I think all PAs and nurse practitioners can revert back to when they first started, and this necessary, or this really difficult time, to where they're learning to be a clinician because there is so much to learn. The learning curve is so steep. I would say for everyone, some specialties may be a little bit more than others, but we had a new grad nurse practitioner last year and her and I were talking about some things and starting your career, and I just felt that there was just this need to have a better transition into practice from your education.

I really feel that ThriveAP is doing this and helping people cut down on the uncertainty and the onboarding necessary, and helping them step into the role. And I don't want say hitting the ground ready to run, but just being more prepared for the job to help their employers know that they have less turnover because these people are ready for practice. I wish I had all those things available to me and I want to help people who are starting their career. I think ThriveAP is doing all those things.

I really feel that ThriveAP is doing this and helping people cut down on the uncertainty and the onboarding necessary, and helping them step into the role. And I don't want say hitting the ground ready to run, but just being more prepared for the job to help their employers know that they have less turnover because these people are ready for practice. I wish I had all those things available to me and I want to help people who are starting their career. I think ThriveAP is doing all those things.

SM: Thank you. We feel really strongly about the transition into practice and what that means. As you mentioned earlier, getting to do all these surgeries and providing this better care and having these, the, the outcomes that you get for your patients, that's something we're passionate about that if you handle the transition to practice for NPS and PAs formally, you really support them. You also mentioned earlier, that [transition to practice] wasn't always a thing, and I think it's still not as prevalent as it should be. You know, people do have those better outcomes and patients are happier, more satisfied, and clinicians are more satisfied - it's that bridge. It's something we take really seriously and  we've gotta make sure we do this right. 

AB: Yeah, very well said.

SM: Part of that is the right faculty. Having people as passionate as yourself and as experienced as yourself, who can come in and talk through those best practices and say, "Hey, I just learned this new thing, this new greatest technology that that is new to this field that, that you can leverage. Let me talk to you about it."

AB: Yeah, exactly.

SM: Speaking a little bit in the vein of supporting your fellow APPs and helping develop them, what do you think are some attributes that a good mentor would have?

AB: Transparency is one of them. No one's perfect. No one, no one started their career knowing all the answers or being able to navigate all these uncertainties that happens in our lifestyle as clinicians. Just letting people know they're not alone.

You know, I can recall when I made this mistake or when I had to do extra learning or work with an organization who can help me get better at what I do, because when you look at someone that has 10 to 15 years experience to somebody new in the field it might seem like they know everything and it's very admirable, but it takes time a lot of time. So having a mentor that's transparent and being honest with you about their struggles, what worked for them, and what didn't work for them, I think is really important.

Within experience too, I mentioned earlier, and I think you could ask a lot of different people and they might all give you a different answer, but how long were you in the field before you started feeling, I'll kind of loosely use the word 'comfortable' because, sometimes you don't know what you don't know. When you're out there it can be an eye-opening experience. And there's definitely the need to have years of experience before you can truly feel like you are comfortable with that. It's not to say that people learn at different speeds, that people have better experience than others and better, you know, training and onboarding, but there's just definitely some truth to being out there for a while and being an expert in the field. That's something that I'm always striving to be better at but it certainly comes with time.

SM: You know, that's a good point, Veronica Hill, DNP, CRNP and I were talking to some of our alumni last week and we were having a great brainstorming session and one of our alumni brought up, "I didn't know what I didn't know, and I wish if I could go back." They were describing that hindsight is 2020 feeling of, I would've asked some different questions during my clinicals. I would've paid more attention to this, what was being prescribed, this pearl that I didn't know to ask that, or I didn't realize how important that would be and that was something I should note down or try to memorize." So I think that's such a key, having that person you can go to and they can be say, listen, I didn't know either, and here's something I learned, or here's somewhere that I went to help me find this information more readily available and more up to date.

AB: And that's exactly what Thrive AP is doing. They're helping clarify these uncertainties because there's so many variables going on in all of our lives at that time, and to have an organization that's helping clarify for them is so important. And as well as, when you pick your first job. How do you pick retirement? How do you pick disability insurance? What do you do with that? And unfortunately, there's a lot of people out there that, even though they might market themselves at being in your best interest, it's not always the case. There's lots of variables there and it's just good to have more resources out there.

"That's exactly what Thrive AP is doing. They're helping clarify these uncertainties because there's so many variables going on in all of our lives at that time, and to have an organization that's helping clarify for them is so important." - Andrew Baker, PA-C

SM: Absolutely, speaking about resources, are there any specific ones that you use on a regular basis: journals, apps or podcasts that you check to stay up to date or check if you're looking for an answer?

AB: It has evolved over time and I would expect it to continue to do that in dermatology. I focus on a lot of the dermatology journals. You know, there's a few notable ones, the Society of Dermatology Physician Assistants is one that I follow very closely because I was recently elected to be their Director at Large starting July of this year. That's one but there's lots of other journals out there, there's one that's really amazing as well, that has a lot of updated journals and just best practices that are available, standard of care adjustments, algorithms, new publications. In our world, in dermatology, the biologic medications have exploded, and there's lots of questions and uncertainty about how do you choose the right medicine for the right patients? What side effects are available? And that's a very complicated set of questions for clinicians and patients so there are tons of resources out there in dermatology that I personally look at. I'm probably not the best person to ask for other ones because dermatology is a really specific specialty.

But then I use UptoDate as well it has a lot of good information. I still enjoy some of the good old fashioned textbooks. I know a lot of people don't, but sometimes it's nice to have one at a reference at your desk you can flip through even though it might not have the most up-to-date information, but for disease states and natural history and things of that nature, I like to basically use all of those things.

SM: I get that I being in marketing, I have some of those different books but every once in a while, it's something that they didn't teach in school when I was going through my undergrad. Then I've had to learn on the fly and practice in digital marketing. But then I have some of those books and every once in a while I'll go back and think, gosh, I haven't done this in a while. How, how do I get started? What are some of the foundational pieces? And then I can figure it out. 

So what advice would you give to APPs of today as they enter that next stage to help them prepare for a successful future?

AB: It's okay to ask for help during your education and training, people are in place to provide you help. As you start to branch off into more independent practice, It's okay to ask others for help and we've mentioned just a few options here that are available for you - utilize them. There are resources created to help you be the best version of yourself and have the most meaningful career in taking care of your patients. So many people feel like they're too smart to ask for help. They have these degrees, you know, they don't need to ask for help, whether it's in clinical practice or beyond. That it is so important to do that, and just know that you're not the first one that's ever done that. That's number one.

I would say number two would be, work for a few years. You know, it's okay to have uncertainty and maybe consult you're collaborating doc more often or have more questions early on in your career. You only get one shot to start off your career the right way. So if you're just not sure about what the best way to treat someone is, or follow up, or when to refer, you have to collaborate with people who have been there and have been working longer. You want to get these good, healthy habits now that will carry through throughout your career.

"It's okay to have uncertainty and maybe consult you're collaborating doc more often or have more questions early on in your career. You only get one shot to start off your career the right way. So if you're just not sure about what the best way to treat someone is, or follow up, or when to refer, you have to collaborate with people who have been there and have been working longer. You want to get these good, healthy habits now that will carry through throughout your career." - Andrew Baker, PA-C

And then the last thing, this was some of the best advice given to me when I was in that stage and I still think back on this now, if you're in the situation where you're choosing a job or transitioning a job - and a lot of what I do, this might sound counterintuitive, is teaching about finance - take the job that's going to teach you the most and not pay you the most early in your career. Out of a hundred people, there's probably a few people that would argue that, but most people believe that you, if you are trained appropriately, you're onboarded appropriately and you have the necessary knowledge and skills early on in your career, it will carry with you throughout and teach you to be the best clinician possible.

"Take the job that's going to teach you the most and not pay you the most early in your career. Out of a hundred people, there's probably a few people that would argue that, but most people believe that you, if you are trained appropriately, you're onboarded appropriately and you have the necessary knowledge and skills early on in your career, it will carry with you throughout and teach you to be the best clinician possible." - Andrew Baker, PA-C

Don't just chase money. There's more to life than that because burnout is real and you need to be mindful of that early in your career, although, we all have debt. We all had debt coming out, most people did and there's lots of ways to get into further debt. Money is important, but it's not everything.

SM: I think that's really sound advice through and through. Asking for help is always difficult. I think human nature is to have a little bit of ego involved and admitting that maybe something isn't your strongest skillset, or is something you don't know. I think, a lot of people struggle with that.

I do think the place where you can learn the most and gain the most experience, specifically for advanced practice providers - because there's so many specialties and paths you can explore - is going somewhere where you can find what is the right fit for you so that you can move into a field that you're really passionate about. We hear often folks who say, "oh, I knew I was going to be orthopedics or I was gonna be cardiology." And then they get this experience in something like dermatology and they're now saying, "it changed my life. It blew my mind. I was so passionate about learning this and I just dove right in." So being somewhere you can have that experience and you can learn and grow, I think that's crucial to avoiding burnout and finding true passion within your career.

AB: Yes, and I was that person you just described. I went to PA school because I was going be in orthopedics. I had shorter surgery, there was a PA I worked with, there was no option that I was not going to work in orthopedics even though I had a couple of job interviews and offers. I have yet to work in orthopedics. And again, nothing against it personally, but that's just how my career shook out. I think that's important for others to realize you can be adaptable and moldable, and finding what works for you is just so important as an APP.

SM: I didn't know, I promise!

AB: Yeah, funny you mention that.

SM: That was just very kismet. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I think all of the information you shared is really beneficial for folks, especially those earlier career APPs as they enter and transition into practice. This is some really key career advice that they can take in and hopefully follow for a successful career in following your footsteps, being passionate and finding the area that they're most passionate about. So thank you for joining us today and thank you to everyone for joining us as well and listening. Please stay tuned as we meet more of a faculty and have a great day.

AB: Thanks, Sarah. 

More About Andrew Baker Pa-C

Andrew Baker is a practicing PA-C in a Medical and Procedural Dermatology Office located in Ohio. He is a graduate of the University of Findlay Physician Assistant Program in May, 2012. He was class President and a member of the National Honor Society, Phi Kappa Phi.

As a PA-C, Andrew has worked in Reconstructive Plastic Surgery, Emergency Medicine, and Dermatology. Andrew always had a passion for helping others. He has mentored and coached many PAs and colleagues who were troubled financially. For the first several years as a PA, his interest in preparing for his financial future continued to grow. He read books, listened to podcasts, attended lectures and frequently visited with a Certified Financial Planner. He realized personal finance is more than making money, saving, paying off debt and investing. The financial choices made by an individual can change your family tree! In 2014, Andrew paid off more than $100,000 in student loans.

We are truly honored to have faculty of Andrew's caliber in our unmatched expert network. If you're interested in learning directly from experts, like Andrew, apply for the ThriveAP program today!