Meet the Author

Updated: 01/15/2018

My name is Paul Alexander Gonzales, and I am currently a certified Physician Assistant living in Dallas, TX (note: I was a PA student in 2014 when I started this blog). I was born and raised in Austin, Texas, but my family is originally from a little town outside of Austin called Lockhart, the BBQ capitol of Texas. I am the second to youngest of 5 biological siblings, but I have 2 half sisters.

I started PA school on May 19th, 2014 at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Texas. I previously worked for St. David's Medical Center in Austin, Texas while attending the University of Texas at Austin. While there, I worked on attaining my bachelor of science in biomedical engineering. During undergrad, I also did lots of volunteer work for many organizations on and off-campus, including working for Austin State Hospital. While at ASH, I worked for the education rehabilitation facility where we would hold focus groups for patients that used drugs and developed mental disorders (such as schizophrenia) or had mental disorders and used drugs to cope with them. I learned a lot about mental health and the lack of resources in the state of Texas. It fostered a desire for me to want to pursue mental health, such as psychiatry or neurology, which is why I eventually found myself at St. David's.
While there, I was a patient care technician, which is similar to a CNA, but we are trained on-the-job, and is how I originally was introduced to the physician assistant profession. After working in the ICU and Neurology units collectively for about 2.5 years, I decided to shadow a PA & physician at Scott & White (now Baylor Scott & White) Hospital in general surgery. I was able to observe the differences between the physician and PA, but also see their team-work and how their relationship meshed so well together so that they could get work accomplished much quicker and efficiently. I also was able to see them both act together in clinic and in surgery, so it was a really nice dynamic that I'm not sure most people get to see anywhere else. Before entering PA school I also was a private mathematics tutor for many years, and eventually I worked for Sylvan Learning Center the fall before PA school started. I had always wanted to teach children and I knew it would be my one opportunity to do so. Since this was a short-lived experience, I took a job with an artificial cervical disc company. While there I created presentations for physicians to present at conferences and wrote papers over the data we were receiving from the patients using our products. I learned a lot about degenerative disc disease and arthroplasty, and sparked an interest in neurosurgery.

I attended my dream school, UT Southwestern Medical Center, about 4 years later. I am so happy I made the decision to come to Dallas. I love Dallas and I love working with children. I graduated in December of 2016 and accepted a position at Children's Health. I have worked at Children's Medical Center Dallas since January of 2017 in pediatric epilepsy.

This is my personal blog, and I will post about topics that I have read about in previous and current issues of PA professional, JAAPA, JPAE, and other articles I find online that may be helpful to Pre-PA students, current PA students, and practicing PA's. I hope you enjoy and let me know if you have any comments or questions for me.