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Emergency medicine (EM) is one of the most intense and demanding fields in healthcare and entering it as a new graduate Physician Assistant (PA) can be daunting. In 2015, Progressive Emergency Physicians (PEP) launched an 18-month Emergency Medicine PA Fellowship Training Program at Good Samaritan University Hospital.  The program is designed to develop new PAs into competent emergency clinicians with appropriate supervision and support.

Emergency departments (EDs) are no strangers to long wait times, overcrowded hallways, and stressed EMS crews. But what if we could eliminate the bottlenecks, reduce delays, and dramatically improve both patient and EMS satisfaction? That’s exactly what Progressive Emergency Physicians (PEP) and Good Samaritan University Hospital on Long Island, NY, did by redesigning its emergency care model—and the results are nothing short of remarkable.

In 2022, the emergency department of a large Louisiana hospital faced a crisis — not just of overcrowding and inefficiency, but of culture. As a Level 1 trauma center, the facility was overwhelmed — patients crowded the hallways, staff morale was at an all-time low, and critical performance metrics like discharge times and patient satisfaction scores lagged well below acceptable levels. The ER’s residency program was also floundering, with only 1 in 12 residents opting to stay post-residency.

Erika Havelka, MD, is a board-certified emergency physician at Illinois Emergency Medicine Specialists (IEMS). She serves as the pediatric physician champion for four UChicago Medicine AdventHealth hospitals: Bolingbrook, Glen Oaks, Hinsdale, and La Grange, and has played a key role in helping these hospitals achieve two EDAP certifications.