When reflecting on my History and Physical assignments from PD1 and PD2, I can definitely see how much my thinking has changed. During the Spring 2025 semester, I was adjusting to the transition from the classroom setting to a clinical setting with frequent hospital visits and learning how to perform proper physical examinations using my Perfect H&P at visits. At this time, my concern for PD1 was to make sure that everything going into my write-ups was written correctly, instead of understanding how to think like a clinician and making the information flow cohesively. Going through this stage was necessary because it taught me how to approach writing an H&P beyond just filling in sections.

The H&P I chose to upload was a friend and family assignment toward the end of the Spring 2025 semester, when I was becoming more comfortable writing H&Ps, and felt it best represented the progress I made at the time. However, the growth that I experienced going into the Fall 2025 semester was significant as a PA student. In PD2, I learned even more clinical knowledge by taking other classes like Clinical Correlations over the summer and fall, as I understood how to form differentials and create assessments and plans. Taking the PD2 lab also allowed me to practice more physical exams, which made learning material and patient interactions at hospital visits feel more purposeful.

Overall, the difference in PD1 to PD2 reflects increased clinical reasoning and understanding; it helped me stray away from writing templated notes and towards thinking more like a provider.