Alain Raymond was working a shift in the cardiac surgery unit when his phone buzzed with a message from his staffing agent. He had been nominated, without his knowledge, for a national industry honor.
“I thought, well, that’s great,” Raymond said. “And then I went back to work.”
Raymond, a cardiothoracic surgical physician assistant-certified (PA-C) and U.S. Navy veteran based in San Diego’s East County, was recently named the “Locum Tenens Provider of the Year” by Locumpedia, a global platform connecting physicians, staffing firms and healthcare facilities.
The story behind the recognition spans continents, combat zones and operating rooms, and it starts long before Raymond ever held a scalpel.
Raymond was born in Haiti and emigrated as a young child to Montreal, Canada, where his mother had settled. Growing up bilingual in French and English, he eventually made his way to Florida for film school, then to Los Angeles, where he worked as a writer, director and producer chasing a career in entertainment when the world changed on Sept. 11, 2001.
“I felt it was unfair that thousands of people were going about their business and ended up dead without any warning,” he said. “If I could do something about it and make my own contribution, I should.”
He enlisted in the U.S. Navy. What followed were two front-line combat tours in Fallujah, Iraq, serving as a Navy corpsman embedded with the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion based at Camp Pendleton. As a combat medic, Raymond said he wore “the caduceus and the gun at the same time.”
“You give life or you take life, depending on the situation,” he said.
Alain Raymond overseas in Fallujah, Iraq, serving as a Navy corpsman. (Photo courtesy of Alain Raymond)In Fallujah, Raymond performed battlefield medical operations alongside trauma surgical teams and trained more than 1,000 Marines as field first responders and casualty evacuation specialists. The work demanded split-second decisions under extreme pressure – a skillset that would later translate directly into the cardiac surgery suite.
Raymond pointed out a piece of medical history that many don’t know: the physician assistant profession itself was born from military medicine. When specially-trained independent duty corpsmen returned from Vietnam in the 1970s, a physician at Duke University enrolled some of them in a formal program and they became the first PAs in the country.
“I absolutely would not be here without my military background,” Raymond said.
Alain Raymond in a white coat and military fatigues. (Photo courtesy of Alain Raymond)After leaving the military, Raymond faced a choice: return to Los Angeles and revive his entertainment career, or follow the medical path his service had opened. By then, he had a family to consider, so he chose medicine.
Raymond graduated from the Stanford School of Medicine Physician Assistant Program, one of the most competitive in the country, and went on to specialize in cardiothoracic surgery, working at major San Diego institutions, including Sharp and Scripps, before eventually adding locum tenens assignments through Aya Locums, a division of Aya Healthcare.
Now on his third locum assignment – currently working alongside cardiothoracic surgeons in Orange County – Raymond describes the appeal of the locum model as one of exposure and growth.
“Every day is different,” Raymond said. “It’s a different person, a different procedure. Patients undergo the same surgery but experience different complications. The challenge keeps me on my toes.”
Raymond said he will never forget his time at Cedars-Sinai – the first time he held a human heart in his hands. It had been removed from one patient, resting briefly on a table before being transplanted into another and brought back to life. The next morning, he spoke with the recipient.
“It was just the most amazing feeling,” he said. “The heart is so resilient and so intricate.”
Physician assistants are one of the fastest-growing occupations in the United States, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics projecting a 20% increase in PA employment by 2034.
For Raymond, the work doesn’t stop at the hospital. In addition to his clinical duties, he is the founder of the Global MAP Foundation, a San Diego-based nonprofit that provides hands-on career exploration to students at no cost.
Children paint at a Global MAP Foundation workshop at a downtown gallery. (Photo courtesy of Alain Raymond)The foundation has held two workshops so far. The first was a cardiac surgery immersion day, hosted at a hospital medical library with support from industry partners who donated pig hearts for hands-on dissection. The second was an introduction to visual art at a gallery in downtown San Diego.
The coming workshops will cover filmmaking and music. Raymond’s long-term vision is something he acknowledges sounds like an oxymoron: a free private school, privately structured to maintain curriculum control, free to ensure access.
Raymond said his children were the original inspiration for the foundation. Long before the nonprofit had a name, he was already running an informal version of it at home.
“My kids are very curious about life skills, the arts and just about everything,” he said.
Raymond is also developing a podcast called “PA’s Voice” that puts a human face on healthcare by interviewing everyone from hospital janitors to CEOs about their path into medicine.
“I wanted to host a medical podcast, but not necessarily talk about medicine,” he said. “There are so many experts breaking down science and innovations, but nobody’s talking about the staff.”
Ask Raymond what connects all of his many hats and his answer is almost disarmingly simple. Every role is a different mission, and every mission follows the same logic: find the problem, fix it, move on to the next one. Any recognition is secondary to the work.
“My reward is usually the accomplishment of the task,” he said. “When I accomplish the task, I just feel on top of the world. Getting recognized for the work is the cherry on top.”
To learn more about the Global MAP Foundation, go to www.globalmapfoundation.org.
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