In emergency medicine, you need to be ready to jump — whether it’s out of a rescue truck or, in the case of Matthew Lavoie, MPAS, PA-C, CAQ, out of a plane. 

Lavoie, who serves as the associate program director for Bryant’s Physician Assistant Studies program, is a former military medic and paratrooper. Having joined the United States Army after high school in 1998, Lavoie received medical training through the service and became responsible for the management and treatment of acute injuries for a 120-person company. 

“Most of my jumps were at nighttime, so you were just jumping out the airplane door and into a black void,” says Lavoie, noting that the experience was scary, yet thrilling.  

Since his four years of making 1,500- to 3,000-foot descents, Lavoie has leapt into an array of adventures. Whether life steered him toward working in a critical care clinical setting, commanding Rhode Island’s largest mass vaccination site during the pandemic, or advancing his education, Lavoie has leveraged his experience to prepare aspiring healthcare professionals to become insightful and compassionate providers. 

Educating others on saving lives 

Lavoie’s passion for teaching originated from his time as an Army medical instructor.  

“We were responsible for training the individuals in our company, and we'd have to teach them all the medical skills they would need to save each other,” Lavoie says, adding that these individuals were readying to deploy to combat zones around the world. “I would instruct them on bleeding control, applying tourniquets, taking care of collapsed lungs, starting IVs, splinting, controlling bleeding, and evacuating casualties under fire.” 

After three years as an Army medical instructor, Lavoie — who earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry with a medical focus — decided to pursue PA school and work full-time in ICU medicine. While working in the hospital setting, Lavoie was deployed to Afghanistan as a physician assistant and stationed with U.S. and Afghan Special Forces on the Pakistan border; he would later be deployed to Cuba under a similar context. While he was in the Middle East, Lavoie taught soldiers advanced trauma management skills. 

Following his return to the states, Lavoie became involved in Bryant’s PA program as a guest lecturer and eventually became course coordinator for the program’s four “Clinical Correlations” courses where students are placed in a simulated clinical environment and tasked with interacting with patients, who were actors pretending to have a condition.

“Students would interview them as if they were seeing them in a real clinical setting and would be evaluated on their ability to see the patient, collect their patient history, determine what's wrong with them, make a treatment plan, deliver the treatment plan, and then work with the instructors to discuss whether or not that plan is appropriate and correct,” Lavoie says. 

While Lavoie’s position as associate program director keeps him busy, the most rewarding part of his job has been serving as the program’s remediation coordinator. 

“I like working with students who have difficulty — whether it be in the didactic phase or in the clinical phase — and working on developing strategies to help them improve and succeed,” Lavoie says.  

Never stop improving 

PA school can be difficult, which is why Lavoie — alongside other program administrators — is creating a more proactive program model that sets up students for success before they arrive on campus for classes. From helping students adapt their study skills for a rigorous course load to assisting those who thrive in hands-on work but don’t test well, Lavoie is there to make sure they reach the finish line after the 27-month program and have the tools they need to get board certified. 

When Lavoie’s not at Bryant, he’s furthering his education to help influence his work and make him a better leader, mentor, and coach for the different phases of students’ education as they transition into the workforce; he completed Bryant’s graduate certificate innovative Healthcare Leadership in 2020 and is currently earning his Doctor of Medical Science with a medical education focus. 

“PAs are integral members of the healthcare community team and are able to supply the public with medical practitioners to help to fill some of these vacancies,” says Lavoie, who recently retired from the service after 26 years. “Enhancing availability for the community at large to be able to provide and treat patients by producing competent medical practitioners is key to the ongoing success of our healthcare provider community.”