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Not enjoying medicine, wanting out


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I was reading this article call stress in medical students (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_in_medical_students) and then came across this post :)  Well, I won't say I understand it but I am trying to empathize with it...nothing is easy and it takes a hell lot of courage. YES, you are not alone, there are many medical students who are suffering from similar dilemma. Keep faith and breathe deep...LET GO :)

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^^^Some people don't see rural living as this great burden...they actually prefer it.

 

As for the leases and SOs, well I'm not talking about going rural as a stopgap. Not as something just to earn you two years and out. But as a planned career choice. Plan accordingly.

 

I never saw medicine as a lifestyle path. It's all about priorities and choices I guess.

 

Lol, maybe you'll be right, but come back and give us your expert opinion when you are in actual practice. BTW why are you posting so much in this forum?

 

Rural rocks.  Best place to live is in the rural areas.  You will only be as bored or depressed or lonely as you choose to be.  They do let me off the reservation once in a while and boy, oh, boy it is such a treat to go shopping at Walmart.  They have everything you need.  No joke. 

 

Love, love , love my rural job!

 

I would have a serious meltdown if I had to work in LA or NYC, even Chicago creeps me out.  

 

 

So true and rural has lots of people really needing care who aren't drug seekers or addicts. People in rural areas, including patients, docs and admins are more likely to treat you with respect. Your autonomy and scope of practice are likely to be greater than in the big city. Life is more relaxed, cost of living is generally lower and there are just as many things to do that you can't do in a big city as there are things that you can only do in a big city. To be sure, it's a trade off but one week worth making.

 

Sent from my Kindle Fire HDX using Tapatalk 2

 

There is nothing wrong with "rural living". I also prefer it. I grew up in the rural west. My point about rural jobs is the sacrifices are what keeps people away. Having "just as many things to do" depends on well, what you like to do. If you have no outdoor hobbies and you like to take your kids to the park and build model planes on the weekends, then Nowhere, South Dakota might suit you just fine.

 

​Everyone and their mom would love to have a rural job in some idyllic little Colorado mountain town where they can ski, hike, hunt, fish....but that's usually not the reality. I remember a few months back there was a job posting for Pagosa Springs, Colorado, and within 24 hours there were over 150 applicants. 24 hours!!! Contrast that with the majority of rural jobs, which are either in the midwest (boring as hell), or the great plains and they are practically begging people to come. For me, and I think most people, the locations typically offering rural work just aren't attractive enough to uproot their life. YMMV, to each his own, all that.

 

I think that adage about medical work is true: You have specialty/scope, location, and pay; and you can pick two. 

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Lol, maybe you'll be right, but come back and give us your expert opinion when you are in actual practice. BTW why are you posting so much in this forum?

 

I think it's more of a character issue and less a "you need to be in practice to understand this concept". As you yourself stated, the issue arises across many career fields, and is not unique to PA practice.

 

There are already cohorts in my class who are going to whine and complain if they don't get to work exactly where they desire (they have expressed as much). And if they do work exactly where they want, it might not be in a desirable job. Again, this is independent of practice as a PA, and more about personal ability to be receptive to other alternatives or locations. Some people will always find a reason to complain, some less so.

 

This not implicative of you, but often I encounter every reason why an alternative just CAN'T be done, instead of true consideration or an attempt at it. Usually it's that someone just doesn't WANT to, not that it's impossible or even impractical.

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  • 4 years later...

I found this forum today as I sit in my walk-in urgent care clinic after just having the second pt in 2 shifts cuss me out and call my supervisor. Once for not giving opiates for chronic back pain in an urgent care setting, and the second for asking a pt to "please hang up your cell phone" after she answered the phone during a physical exam and commenced an extended conversation about how she was at "the doctor's right now". which ended with her telling her phone companion her doctor was "a real asshole" and she had to leave. 

I am really feeling the pressure of my decision to not become a physical therapist, and not pursue fire/EMS and join a community of PA's practicing because I had such a passion for medicine and anatomy. 

This helped me so much just reading that I am not alone. All I ever hear is that this is the top #5 career going forward and everyone loves it, etc, etc. That just makes me feel more frustrated. 

I have worked primary care to pay back loans for 3 years, after getting about 1/3 of my debt forgiven I felt comfortable moving on to something else, mainly because I was so miserable working primary care. Now I work urgent care and I feel that though the grass looked "greener" before I got here, its just new problems that result in the same feelings. 

I'm prior military, worked EMS for 6 years, was an ocean lifeguard for 9 and became a PA since it seemed like a logical progression, and I really enjoy the problem solving of medicine, and the joy i get when someone who needs my knowledge actually improves. Now,  I feel most days like I should just have button on my scrubs that patients can hit to get what they googled prior to coming in. And most of my decisions start at "what would be good care" and after pt push back and demands, and sometimes verbal abuse end with "how can I get out of this room without this patient suing me". To complicate matters more, my last job stated that if I didnt get a 95% approval rating they would take away a portion of a small annual bonus of $4400 for meeting ACO metrics. The physicians in the clinic received $80,000 for meeting the same metrics. 

Loans, non-compliance, malingering, opiates, regulations, charting, fighting for fair pay, everything seems unsatisfying now. I worked for 6 years to get here, and now that i am here I find myself wondering"why"?. I have been placed in the role of a doctor at every position I have taken, only to here from the RN's around me that they nearly make my salary (and sometimes surpass me by quite a bit) 

How have we allowed this to happen? and what can we do about it. I left my first job after 3 years where I worked alone in a rural RHC seeing complicated patients 4 days a week for a well paid nurses salary after they informed it would be impossible to give me a raise. 

I have written my congressman about loans and interest rates on my student loans to no avail. I have joined AAPA and fill out my salary report annually and fight for my raises based on PA's around me, yet most often I am turned down for new jobs after we cannot agree on fair salary. Has anyone else felt that requiring a masters degree has increased the debt load without actually increasing the pay we receive? 

Ok now I am complaining and I know. I have nobody to blame but myself. I am feeling so discouraged it just helps to hear that others out there are feeling the same. My major frustrations: if i am held to the same standard as a physician in practice, and I fill the role of a position that was previously filled by a physician, then why do not receive similar pay? But maybe that would not even make a real difference. Ill do my two years here and find a new specialty and this time hope I can be satisfied somewhere in medicine. 

 

 

 

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This thread is an oldie, but a goodie.  

1.  What's clear after being on these boards for years is that there are very few things one can do with a PA degree outside of practicing, so if you are not into teaching or ready to retire, you need to find a specialty that you enjoy.  Think outside the box like sleep medicine or something.  UC is tough to make a career out of anymore.  It's VERY corporate now where it's about numbers and reviews.  One bad review from an A-hole patient and you can be gone.  I've seen providers let go by non-clinical admins on more then one occasion because they got a bad review on Yelp or Google.  Tough to succeed and be happy when confined by those parameters.  

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Here is the single biggest thing that has helped me.... stop caring about anything but good medicine. I have the first patient complaint to the board in 30 years from a patient who came in for problem A and we she was seen a couple of days later for a totally unrelated problem was found to have a somewhat serious dx. She complained about a missed diagnosis that was totally unrelated to the reason I saw her.

People suck.

Administrators care about nothing but money and patient satisfaction surveys. They know nothing about the business of medicine.

It is this way everywhere pretty much with a few notable exceptions.

I can't control any of this so it flows around me like a rock in a stream.

 

I'm looking at some specialty jobs but I'm old and spent my whole career in FP and UC. I'm not sure I can make a smooth transition. Of course today I am a bit tired so things may look different tomorrow.

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17 hours ago, nevadaPA1980 said:

I found this forum today as I sit in my walk-in urgent care clinic after just having the second pt in 2 shifts cuss me out and call my supervisor. Once for not giving opiates for chronic back pain in an urgent care setting, and the second for asking a pt to "please hang up your cell phone" after she answered the phone during a physical exam and commenced an extended conversation about how she was at "the doctor's right now". which ended with her telling her phone companion her doctor was "a real asshole" and she had to leave. 

I am really feeling the pressure of my decision to not become a physical therapist, and not pursue fire/EMS and join a community of PA's practicing because I had such a passion for medicine and anatomy. 

This helped me so much just reading that I am not alone. All I ever hear is that this is the top #5 career going forward and everyone loves it, etc, etc. That just makes me feel more frustrated. 

I have worked primary care to pay back loans for 3 years, after getting about 1/3 of my debt forgiven I felt comfortable moving on to something else, mainly because I was so miserable working primary care. Now I work urgent care and I feel that though the grass looked "greener" before I got here, its just new problems that result in the same feelings. 

I'm prior military, worked EMS for 6 years, was an ocean lifeguard for 9 and became a PA since it seemed like a logical progression, and I really enjoy the problem solving of medicine, and the joy i get when someone who needs my knowledge actually improves. Now,  I feel most days like I should just have button on my scrubs that patients can hit to get what they googled prior to coming in. And most of my decisions start at "what would be good care" and after pt push back and demands, and sometimes verbal abuse end with "how can I get out of this room without this patient suing me". To complicate matters more, my last job stated that if I didnt get a 95% approval rating they would take away a portion of a small annual bonus of $4400 for meeting ACO metrics. The physicians in the clinic received $80,000 for meeting the same metrics. 

Loans, non-compliance, malingering, opiates, regulations, charting, fighting for fair pay, everything seems unsatisfying now. I worked for 6 years to get here, and now that i am here I find myself wondering"why"?. I have been placed in the role of a doctor at every position I have taken, only to here from the RN's around me that they nearly make my salary (and sometimes surpass me by quite a bit) 

How have we allowed this to happen? and what can we do about it. I left my first job after 3 years where I worked alone in a rural RHC seeing complicated patients 4 days a week for a well paid nurses salary after they informed it would be impossible to give me a raise. 

I have written my congressman about loans and interest rates on my student loans to no avail. I have joined AAPA and fill out my salary report annually and fight for my raises based on PA's around me, yet most often I am turned down for new jobs after we cannot agree on fair salary. Has anyone else felt that requiring a masters degree has increased the debt load without actually increasing the pay we receive? 

Ok now I am complaining and I know. I have nobody to blame but myself. I am feeling so discouraged it just helps to hear that others out there are feeling the same. My major frustrations: if i am held to the same standard as a physician in practice, and I fill the role of a position that was previously filled by a physician, then why do not receive similar pay? But maybe that would not even make a real difference. Ill do my two years here and find a new specialty and this time hope I can be satisfied somewhere in medicine. 

 

 

 

You need to get out of UC and FP. They are miserable fields unless you work with supervising docs that will straight up tell patients they dont care how they feel, this is the correct treatment....thats rare now and basically all UCs and FP are drive through medicine.

 

Try a different specialty.... the specialties where patients actually need real help are typically the best, because you get less BS costumer service demands. 

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I found this forum today as I sit in my walk-in urgent care clinic after just having the second pt in 2 shifts cuss me out and call my supervisor. Once for not giving opiates for chronic back pain in an urgent care setting, and the second for asking a pt to "please hang up your cell phone" after she answered the phone during a physical exam and commenced an extended conversation about how she was at "the doctor's right now". which ended with her telling her phone companion her doctor was "a real asshole" and she had to leave. 
I am really feeling the pressure of my decision to not become a physical therapist, and not pursue fire/EMS and join a community of PA's practicing because I had such a passion for medicine and anatomy. 
This helped me so much just reading that I am not alone. All I ever hear is that this is the top #5 career going forward and everyone loves it, etc, etc. That just makes me feel more frustrated. 
I have worked primary care to pay back loans for 3 years, after getting about 1/3 of my debt forgiven I felt comfortable moving on to something else, mainly because I was so miserable working primary care. Now I work urgent care and I feel that though the grass looked "greener" before I got here, its just new problems that result in the same feelings. 
I'm prior military, worked EMS for 6 years, was an ocean lifeguard for 9 and became a PA since it seemed like a logical progression, and I really enjoy the problem solving of medicine, and the joy i get when someone who needs my knowledge actually improves. Now,  I feel most days like I should just have button on my scrubs that patients can hit to get what they googled prior to coming in. And most of my decisions start at "what would be good care" and after pt push back and demands, and sometimes verbal abuse end with "how can I get out of this room without this patient suing me". To complicate matters more, my last job stated that if I didnt get a 95% approval rating they would take away a portion of a small annual bonus of $4400 for meeting ACO metrics. The physicians in the clinic received $80,000 for meeting the same metrics. 
Loans, non-compliance, malingering, opiates, regulations, charting, fighting for fair pay, everything seems unsatisfying now. I worked for 6 years to get here, and now that i am here I find myself wondering"why"?. I have been placed in the role of a doctor at every position I have taken, only to here from the RN's around me that they nearly make my salary (and sometimes surpass me by quite a bit) 
How have we allowed this to happen? and what can we do about it. I left my first job after 3 years where I worked alone in a rural RHC seeing complicated patients 4 days a week for a well paid nurses salary after they informed it would be impossible to give me a raise. 
I have written my congressman about loans and interest rates on my student loans to no avail. I have joined AAPA and fill out my salary report annually and fight for my raises based on PA's around me, yet most often I am turned down for new jobs after we cannot agree on fair salary. Has anyone else felt that requiring a masters degree has increased the debt load without actually increasing the pay we receive? 
Ok now I am complaining and I know. I have nobody to blame but myself. I am feeling so discouraged it just helps to hear that others out there are feeling the same. My major frustrations: if i am held to the same standard as a physician in practice, and I fill the role of a position that was previously filled by a physician, then why do not receive similar pay? But maybe that would not even make a real difference. Ill do my two years here and find a new specialty and this time hope I can be satisfied somewhere in medicine. 
 
 
 
Are you in Vegas? If you are... There's better situations.. I'm thinking you're not though?
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On 2/21/2019 at 4:37 PM, nevadaPA1980 said:

Ok now I am complaining and I know. I have nobody to blame but myself. I am feeling so discouraged it just helps to hear that others out there are feeling the same. My major frustrations: if i am held to the same standard as a physician in practice, and I fill the role of a position that was previously filled by a physician, then why do not receive similar pay? But maybe that would not even make a real difference. Ill do my two years here and find a new specialty and this time hope I can be satisfied somewhere in medicine. 

What would you do instead? 

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  • 2 years later...

I have come across this thread due to feeling similar in my current work situation and googled “dissatisfaction as a PA”. Here’s a little take away/background: 1. Yes I was an EMT. 2. Yes I knew what PAs job duties and descriptions were and even shadowed happy PAs in different specialties. 
 

This is my first job as a PA, and I’m working in occ med. I needed experience and took this gig with hopes it would give me experience. (It was with a large company with good pay and they were able and willing to hire a new grad.) Now to find out it may not be the right experience (based on reading this thread… what a shame I’m wasting time in this job that makes me unsatisfied). I started my career as a PA, eager and happy and excited to care for patients with a great bedside manner. I still desire this, but the patient population and overall processes have worn me down. Now, I look forward to going home before the day has started, and I am short and crude with patients while actively trying not to be. This is burnout. I know it. I am discouraged. I am even at the point of considering a change in careers (Even though I know that I am a good PA and I truly want to do this).

I know I need to change specialties. I’m barely hanging on to this gig to pay my loans and not break a contract. I thought FM or IM was the way to go (from this thread, it appears that is not necessarily the case). Now, I’m honestly curious which specialty makes PAs the most satisfied and happy? (Not financially, I am speaking in terms of emotionally.)

Even in 2021, from a 2014 post, the system is the same. The system has managed to keep getting “suckers” (for lack of a better term) to work in these terrible positions, to experience burn out, to keep the revolving door open and the costs down. Now this is a rant. 

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I don't think there is a single specialty that "makes PAs the most satisfied and happy".  My best friend from PA school loves her primary care job.  I have another classmate that works primarily in breast reconstruction surgery and from what I hear loves that.  I love my EM job (most days).  It's the intersection of PA, specialty, and specific practice site that answers that question - so the answer is going to vary.

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7 hours ago, Flcapa2020 said:

 

Even in 2021, from a 2014 post, the system is the same. The system has managed to keep getting “suckers” (for lack of a better term) to work in these terrible positions, to experience burn out, to keep the revolving door open and the costs down. Now this is a rant. 

Obviously everyone's experience will be different but this is something I came to realize about my place of work before leaving to go to medical school.

 

I was quickly hired after graduating and had a great training environment with gradual increases of autonomy. However, as time went on I slowly watched everything I had work toward disappear. Management was able to find new graduates to fill the spots of PAs who were fired, laid off, or decided to leave. And thus the cycle continues.

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4 hours ago, ohiovolffemtp said:

It's the intersection of PA, specialty, and specific practice site that answers that question - so the answer is going to vary.

I totally understand that. It’s trial and error to find the best fit for each person. And specialty, although same, can change and vary by individual location/site/practice. I guess statistics of the most happy PAs in a specialty is more of what I’m thinking. What % of PAs are satisfied and happy in __ specialty? AAPA needs these statistics in addition to the the normal stats they compile. 😄

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It will only get worse with the glut of new internet NPs. More and more new grads for a limited number of jobs so people will take lousy jobs because they have bills to pay. Then tolerating poor work conditions becomes the expected norm from employers. You don't like it? Move on down the road. There are 20 people waiting to take your place.

 

I'm working in a high acuity, high mental illness type practice where getting yelled at is anticipated daily. Yet each day there is at least one person I was able to really help. I focus on those.

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45 minutes ago, CAAdmission said:

Occ Med is like creeping death.

Working in Occ Med was one of the punishments in Dante's Inferno

To each their own. Before you go making a caustic remark like that I wish you would get the facts and not stereo type about a specialty. There are specialty fields I would have no interest in but won't comment on them and run down someone else's interest.

Please be careful about negative comments about our specialty fields.

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I can list pluses and minuses on every field and every job I have ever had. It all comes down to individual preferences. Everyone has their own currency and it changes over time. 25 years ago I was ALLLL about the money and I worked 7 days a week for 2 years once.

Now my currency is time.

If you are trying to weigh yes or no on a field or position I like a simple pro and con side-by-side list. Then you give weight to all the different pieces based on what you value and what is most important to you. Slide them up and down based on importance. When its all lined up look at your list and decide.

It can be a big list or a pretty simple one. You add things like, pay, PTO, work environment, travel time, patient load, call and weekends etc etc. Then add anything that is a unique value to you beyond the obvious.

Then decide

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I love occ med, done right, so much that I'm starting a practice just to focus in it.

There is a pace beyond which each specialty is un-fun and dangerous.  This is the minimum pace at which 'admin' will expect you to work.  Until and unless you have the ability to control your own pace, you will be at the mercy of this pathetic treadmill.

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