Treating Patients, Educating Parents

Daniel Moscato (M.S. ’16) loves that a large part of his work involves education: not only through counseling parents in urgent care settings and teaching students at New York Tech but also through publishing research to inform, validate, and encourage urgent care medical providers.

Moscato, an assistant professor of physician assistant studies in the School of Health Professions and a physician assistant at PM Pediatric Urgent Care in the Bronx, N.Y., recently published a research study in The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. The survey-based study, titled “The Impact of Parental Pressure on Providers Practicing in Pediatric Urgent Care,” measured how often the expectations of a parent bringing a child to urgent care altered a clinician’s recommended management plan and their ability to administer evidence-based medical care.

“This study dives into how parent requests and perceived expectations affect clinicians. There are documented negative impacts on stress for providers,” Moscato says. He also emphasizes, “I think it’s very important to take the concerns of parents into account because parents know their children best. There needs to be a balance between what parents expect for their child and what we as clinicians know is the best care for their child.”

The research found that most urgent care clinicians surveyed experienced higher levels of stress due to pressure from parents for unnecessary testing or medications. The good news, however, is that most respondents agreed that they were still able to provide quality, evidence-based care to their patients.

Another positive finding: Clinicians reported that parents were often amenable to education and counseling about why the provider’s treatment and management recommendations were appropriate.

“That’s why I think pediatrics is so special; there’s a huge education and counseling component to it, and I love that. Most of the time, parents are able to understand this is what’s best for their child, even if it’s not what they had expected from us,” Moscato says. “Counseling can take up a big portion of the visit, but if you take the time to educate the parent and patient, every visit can end positively.”

He hopes his research will help validate the experiences of pediatric urgent care providers and encourage them to realize that, despite these challenges, it’s still possible to provide evidence-based care. He also notes that because the survey collected responses only from urgent care providers, the results could be different for clinicians in other healthcare settings when parents have an established relationship with the provider. 

The publication of Moscato’s paper represents a meaningful achievement in the trajectory of his career, which began in the New York Tech physician assistant studies program more than a decade ago. Since 2024, he has worked to inspire New York Tech students in classroom teaching and in their clinical rotations.

“The most special part of my position is seeing the students on day one and then watching their transformation when they’re putting on their white coat at graduation,” he says.

The transformation from student to professional is evident in Moscato as well.

“Dan had the best qualities you could hope for in a student. He was intelligent, calm, and genuinely kind to everyone around him,” says Corri Wolf, Ph.D., chair of physician assistant studies and an associate professor in the School of Health Professions. “It has been a true pleasure to watch him grow into an exceptional clinician and colleague, and we are fortunate that he has chosen to return to the program that trained him. There is no better role model for our students.”

By Ashley Festa