Being a working mom in healthcare is tough. This PA created a space for support

My daughter was born when my husband was in his last year of his neurology residency. Without parental leave, he was able to take off just a day and a half from work. Needless to say, those first few months were challenging, especially when he was on call and working nights.??

So I was excited to talk to Raquelle Akavan, DMSc, PA-C , the founder of PA Moms . Akavan said she had her children at a relatively young age, before her peers, and turned to Facebook in 2016 as a way to find support.?

“I didn't really have anyone to talk to about the difficulties of being not only a PA working full time, but also a PA working in neurosurgery,” she told me. “I was the lead neurosurgery PA for my team and the balance of everything was really getting to me.”

The Facebook group quickly took off and by 2020, had almost 10,000 members.?

As COVID-19 cases spiked, and elective procedures were cancelled, Akavan suddenly found herself with more time. It was then that she decided to build out PA Moms into a full-fledged organization affiliated with the American Academy of Physician Associates . The group now counts almost 20,000 members.?

Being a working mom in healthcare is not easy. In many specialties, the hours don’t align with daycare schedules, and when kids get sick, it’s hard to drop everything when you have a full schedule of patients. And even when the balancing act is going well, there’s still a penalty for working moms when it comes to pay and promotions.

And then there’s the issue of parental leave. A 2023 study in Women’s Health Report found that at the top 20 hospitals (as ranked by U.S. News and World Report) average paid leave for birthing mothers was just 7.9 weeks while non-birthing parents got 6.6 weeks. (The industry is woefully behind the corporate world.) And it was only as recently as 2022 that the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education mandated that residency programs must provide a minimum of six weeks of paid parental leave — without requiring parents to make up lost time.

That means women, who make up the majority of the healthcare workforce, are often returning to patient care while still breastfeeding and sleep-deprived.??

Being affiliated with the AAPA has opened a lot of doors for PA Moms, Akavan notes. The group now has a leadership team of 13 women. It leads fundraising campaigns, has given out more than $5,000 in scholarships and partners with various companies to offer benefits to members. It also hosts an annual conference where attendees can earn continuing medical education. But the real draw is that it’s “a place to meet each other and feel like they're part of something bigger,” Akavan said.?

In our conversation below, we discuss the biggest challenges she hears from members, her advice for anyone facing barriers with their employers and how to make healthcare workplaces more supportive for mothers.

The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity.

And tell me: How have you balanced your clinical career with parenthood?

LinkedIn News: What are some of the areas where your members have been seeking support?

Akavan: For the last eight years, it's [been the same topics] over and over again. People are talking about employers that aren't letting them breastfeed, punishing them for taking the time to do it. Or [they’re asking], how do I navigate interviewing for new jobs while pregnant? Or not being able to move up into leadership positions because they’re pregnant or want to have a family.

LinkedIn News: What kind of advice do you give? For example, to someone who needs accommodations for breastfeeding.??

Akavan: The advice is to advocate for yourself with facts. We also partner with another group that we founded called PAs for Women Empowerment and they created a graphic with the federal laws so you can go to your management team and be like, this is what I'm entitled to.

LinkedIn News: What are some of the unique challenges that PA moms face?

Akavan: The biggest one is balancing their time. But the thing is, as PAs, we are one of the most underrepresented healthcare professions; that makes it even more difficult because a lot of people still don't know what a PA is or what a PA does. And then being in an underrepresented profession that is a majority of women, that hurts us as well.

The other big problem is there's a lot of attrition in the profession because of all these problems. I'm seeing it every single day in the group. They are asking how do I get out of medicine because of burnout. They're not getting jobs. They're being passed over by nurse practitioners because of the administrative barriers that we have. Nurse practitioners are able to have independent practice, meaning they don't need a supervising physician to sign paperwork in 27 states, and PAs only have that in seven states. A lot of places aren't hiring PAs anymore because it's too much administrative work for them.

LinkedIn News: What’s your sense of not only how to keep women in the workforce but get them into leadership positions?

Akavan: It comes from the top down, and creating a space where it's okay to have a family, a good work-life integration. That's where you have to start, surveying your employees, making sure that it is a space that's safe for them and not giving demotions because they went on maternity leave.

I really do feel like it starts with them. Then the way it starts with us though is support and mentorship. If you see someone getting discriminated against at work, speak up, give them advice, mentor them. And I think groups like PA Moms really do help because it's a way for people to get support when it's not readily available.

LinkedIn News: What would a more supportive workplace for mothers look like?

Akavan: A big hospital system could have a daycare, right? As moms, childcare is probably one of our biggest issues, because if both parents are working, we need good childcare. A space for moms to pump and breastfeed, that's obviously huge. Breastfeeding is literally temporary. People usually do it for a year and then that's it.

[Another improvement would be] allowing people to go on leave and then come back and be able to move up, to still promote them, not treating it as like, you weren't here.

LinkedIn News: What’s the state of parental leave for PAs?

Akavan: I can't speak for every single company, of course, but from what I'm seeing in my group and from my experience, we don't get any paid leave most of the time. It's usually [the Family and Medical Leave Act], 12 unpaid weeks, and if you live in New York or California, there's an opportunity to have extended paid leave but it's not fully paid. It’s a conversation we have all the time on the PA moms group: why in healthcare are we not taking care of the health of our own?

LinkedIn News: How would you describe the impact of this group?

Akavan: We created something way bigger than I thought it would ever be. It’s like a movement — people feel like they belong to something. A really simple thing that we do is, you know when your little kid has a lovey? People will post and be like, we lost this one, is there anywhere we can find another one? And people will go out of their way to help each other. They'll travel an hour to get this little lovey stuffed animal and send it to this mom. We move mountains for each other.

There are stories about people who had parents in the hospital and PA Moms will go visit those family members, help them get the care they need. It takes a village to take care of each other and our kids, but this created a bigger village, a huge one of 20,000 people.