"I am a trained physician assistant who has practiced clinically in this field for 23+ years. In my caring for people as I help them get well, I spent a great deal of time teaching people about their problems, how to get well quicker AND how to prevent illness again. I guess in this nature I have taught all my adult life. I found myself drawn to teaching children of all ages and their parents about their problems through talking, drawings that they could take home, copies of any imaging studies with age level explanations for show and tell and I even show up at show and tell if requested. I just love to see the "aha" moment come into a child's eyes or face when they get it. It is the warmest feeling in my heart to know I have just allayed fears and helped a child understand at their level what they are going through.

I have taught formally to medical students, nursing and nurse practitioner students, PA students and all other types of allied health students. But I have also taught children in their classrooms (invited by the children, parents or the teacher). I have also lectured to medical schools, PA schools, nurse practitioner schools, grand rounds at the hospital and a large number of would be specialists (resident cohorts). I always bring my lectures to them back to the patient. Each patient and family group MUST understand the process of injury and healing so that the body will work with them to heal. We all have the potential to heal. Just as we all have the potential to learn. Each person needs a different approach to presenting the information. I particularly love to work with 2 - 4 year olds enriching their natural play with learning to investigate, setting up simple experiments to prove their own hypotheses and discussing why something did or did not work and how to fix it.

I am able to find many ways to break down a problem into little chunks to help the child understand each chunk and then put it together into the whole. I also am able to use items that a child likes to play with to hel" less...