Megan Ferrell, PA-C | Norton Children's Medical Group

I am Megan Ferrell. I'm a physician assistant with the Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery Team. I really enjoy surgery, heart surgery in particular. I've worked with adults for the past five years, but I've always been interested in the pediatric population, so I'm excited to learn more and translate those skills to the pediatrics.
The cardiovascular system was always my favorite when I was in school. It just came the easiest to me. It's really interesting how the heart is integral to the body as a whole, and if it is not working, everything else kind of crashes around it. So to be able to fix that and see improvements with other body systems is really gratifying.
I start by walking through the whole process, what brought them to me in the first place? What is their history, what all contributed to that? I go through all of the nitty-gritty details of surgery and the post-operative course, and then really talk about what their healing stages are going to look like and eventually talk about getting them back to a lot of their activities that they liked to do before surgery.
And everyone's scared of surgery. I always joke, no one wants to meet me whenever we have to talk about heart surgery. Nobody wants it. And of course, all their questions are, "When can I go on vacation? When can I golf and when can I hunt?" And I say, "It's going to be a while, but our goal is to get you back towards all of those things." And whenever they realize that they could probably return to a lot of those activities, their mindset about their willingness towards surgery changes.
A lot of changes have been made. Granted, I haven't been practicing in surgery for terribly long, but whenever you have patients whose parents or grandparents had heart surgery, their incisions are a lot longer. They said they were in the hospital for months. But I find that the recovery is not as intense as people think it is or are worried about. And we have made a lot of changes to get them better sooner, get them out of the hospital sooner. And that includes making sure they're increasing their activity. A lot of different changes in the medicines that they're on have proven to improve mortality and morbidity, and give them that survival benefit that surgery can give them.
I am originally from Lexington. I went to the University of Kentucky for my undergraduate degree and for PA school, but I've been living in Louisville for eight years now. I did most of my clinical rotations in Louisville, and my sister lives here, so I moved in with her whenever I first came here, and I never left.
I enjoy reading. That's how I spend a lot of my time. Doing things around the house. I love to work in my garden. I like to travel, and I like to run.
One series that I've read that I'm probably going to revisit soon. It's called The Throne of Glass series. Very popular right now, but it's a completed fantasy series. It's like eight books long, a lot of characters, a lot of world building. It's just a good escape from the stress of the world and from work. And then in my garden, I really enjoy flowers. I have a lot of bulbs that I like to plant. So irises are some of the big ones that I tend to every year. I also put my annuals out every year. I usually have a big wall of pink vincas on the front of my garden bed. So by the end of the summer, it's just a big explosion of pink and green.