PA John Byrnes Uses His Skills as a PA to Provide Critical Resources, Care, and Training Internationally

“We are lucky we have the ability to do this.”

By Jennifer Walker

November 12, 2025

In September 2025, John Byrnes, a physician associate in Florida, went on a humanitarian trip to Ukraine as part of a team to deliver much-needed supplies and provide training to Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines of the Russia-Ukraine war. To get there, he first flew to Warsaw, Poland, then drove three hours to the Ukrainian border, then another seven hours to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. Over the next five days, they moved by van and train around the country, stopping along the battlefront to deliver a total of 800 high-end combat medical kits. These kits contained the supplies needed to treat injuries, save lives, and prevent limb loss, a widespread and tragic consequence of war.

“Hopefully, we can prevent some amputations with proper usage of tourniquets, as well as proper training,” said Byrnes, the APP specialty director for Surgical Assistants of Florida at AdventHealth Medical Group in Orlando. “If we could prevent one amputation or one death, that was our goal.”

For 25 years, Byrnes has been involved in international service missions that have taken him to several Eastern European countries, as well as India and Mexico. During these missions, Byrnes experiences daily life in these countries, occasionally placing himself in dangerous situations.

Most recently, in Kyiv, Ukraine, where Byrnes and his team stayed in a hotel, air raid sirens went off regularly throughout the night. One evening, Byrnes heard the unmistakable whizzing of a cruise missile before it hit a nearby building. Still, Byrnes said the opportunity to help people in need is worth the risk.

Building a Career of Service
Byrnes graduated from the PA program at the University of Florida in 1979, only 12 years after the PA profession was founded, and chose to practice in cardiovascular surgery at a hospital in Orlando. He was the city’s first surgical PA.

“We were creating the profession at the time,” said Byrnes, who went on to start Southeastern Clinical Services, a private surgical assisting business in Orlando, that grew from having him as the only PA in 1992 to employing 19 PAs in 2024.

Early in his career, Byrnes was part of a team that worked with local hospitals to develop privileging and credentialing for non-physicians, as well as with AAPA and the State of Florida to advocate for reimbursement for PAs. In 1981, he co-founded the Association of Physician Assistants in Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery to bring more representation to the subspecialty; today, the group has nearly 1,000 members globally. Byrnes has been active with AAPA as a member of the House of Delegates and as Chair of the Surgical Congress, and he is a former president and board member of the Physician Associate Foundation.

Finding a Place in International Volunteer Work
In the early 2000s, Byrnes began participating in medical teaching trips to Eastern Europe with the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). Over four years, he traveled to Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, and the Republic of Georgia to train physicians and other providers on topics related to family medicine and primary care.

Byrnes also provided healthcare screenings to local communities; distributed supplies, including antibiotics, nutritional supplements, bandages, blood pressure cuffs, and stethoscopes; and trained people in how to use them. “This was my first encounter with what is possible for us as physician associates to do what is needed as volunteers to help people,” he said.

In 2000, Byrnes also began going on international service missions with the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem, an ancient international organization built on chivalry and service that dates back to the Second Crusades in the 1100s. In more than two decades, along with volunteering in food pantries and shelters in the U.S., Byrnes, who is now the Grand Prior of the organization, has traveled to Mexico and India to work in clinics that treat leprosy, a chronic infectious disease with which 250,000 people are diagnosed each year. He also went to Ukraine with The Order in 2006, where he met his wife, Anna.

On these missions, Byrnes is filling gaps in care and resources, which was the reason the PA profession was established in the 1960s. Then, military veterans with considerable in-field medical training graduated from the first PA programs during a time when there was a shortage of primary care physicians.  “The PA profession was founded because of these highly-trained combat medics who had skills that were needed in the healthcare field but no mechanism to use them in the U.S.,” he said. “Now highly-trained PAs can use their skills in other countries where there may not be enough physicians. We’re coming full circle.”

Providing Critical Resources on the Front Lines
As of late 2024, about 50,000 Ukrainians have lost limbs in the Russia-Ukraine war, according to the Ukrainian Health Ministry. “The most common injuries are blast injuries from missiles, drones, mines, and artillery, and they are devastating injuries,” said Byrnes, adding that this includes injuries that occur after missiles and drones are shot down.

During the war, getting to a hospital for care after a serious injury is a challenge. There aren’t medical helicopters or ambulances because they would be targets, Byrnes said. Driving is a possibility, but it would have to be at night and likely under cover.

As a result, having medical equipment on the front lines and knowing how to properly use it is of the utmost importance. In 2023, Byrnes was on a team that took a truck filled with $100,000 of rehabilitation equipment to a military hospital in Berdychiv in central Ukraine. Then in 2024 and again this past September, Byrnes and the group—which included seven other people from the United States, Ukraine, Germany, and Great Britain—personally delivered the combat medical kits, which are stocked with top-of-the-line equipment, including tourniquets and hemostatic agents for bleedings. The team also provided training on how to best use the supplies. For example, prolonged or inappropriate use of tourniquets can lead to limb loss for patients, so the group instructed the soldiers on the best way to use this vital resource. One of Byrnes’ team members had suffered an amputation during combat in 2022, so the soldiers listened attentively to his story.

Byrnes, who is also the associate clinical education director for the Florida State University College of Medicine’s PA program on its Orlando campus, plans to return to Ukraine again next year in a similar capacity. For other PAs, he encourages them to be of service to communities, whether they are abroad or at home. “You don’t have to travel,” he said. “There are so many people here who don’t have the healthcare they need. You can volunteer in your own backyard.”

Jennifer Walker is a freelance writer in Baltimore, MD. Contact Jennifer at [email protected].

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