Lawrence (Larry) Herman ’20 DMSc, PA-Chas worked in the medical field for 30 years. He started out working in a busy trauma center in New York City. Then he went to the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) to learn more about being a PA. He has also worked in PA programs across the southern United States.
No matter where he has worked, he has been a leader. He served as the head of emergency medicine APPs at St. Vincent/Catholic Medical Center and then as director of clinical education and program director at NYIT. Herman was recruited to be program director and dean in North Carolina, and a program in Texas.
Herman has been a pharmacology teacher for 16 years. He was also a PA in emergency medicine and family practice. Herman has been very successful, holding national leadership positions including being the past president of the American Academy of PA and being a distinguished fellow with AAPA.
Herman has been working as a consultant in South Carolina for several years, helping PA programs with issues of accreditation and compliance. More recently, he has been working with medical education companies (MECs). He helps them figure out what their students need to learn and writes curricula for them. He also applies for grants based on specific diseases, like vaccines or cancer prevention. In this arena, one of his roles has been to moderate and serve as a content expert for continuing medical education (CME).
Herman moderates several continuing medical education (CME) programs for organizations likePrimed (Boston and Philadelphia) and the AAPA. In the past, this job required a lot of traveling. But now with more people using online platforms, Herman has been working to revise and rewrite important grants so they will work well on online platforms.
He said that he is used to giving presentations to audiences of 500 to 1,000 PAs. But, he was working on developing new ways to keep the audience’s attention by using the technology that is available now.
Herman is no stranger to developing technology. He has been involved in podcasts for Primed. The podcasts are designed for physicians, NPs, and PAs. They involve panels of experts and moderators.
He is an expert on grant writing. He has helped develop dozens of CME programs focused on public health issues like vaccines for pneumonia, HPV, and the flu.
Of his experience in the DMSc program, he said he found the program challenging and incredibly worthwhile, and enjoyed the research part of the courses the most. What he finds most intriguing about the program, faculty and especially his colleagues are how every single one has adapted to the current crises.
He is proud of how colleagues have responded to the COVID-19 crisis. He borrowed a colleague’s expression: “PAs are the stem cells of medicine. They adapt, grow, and go wherever is necessary. They respond, fill the void, and fix things.”
That is why PAs – regardless of their specialty – were so valuable during the COVID-19 outbreak, he said. The family practice PA can adapt and do telemedicine or fill-in in the emergency department. The cardiothoracic PA is comfortable outside the operating room and managing the intensive care unit (ICU) .
He said that PAs are, without a doubt, the most adaptable healthcare providers during unprecedented times.
