Is there a preference for residency trained PA vs non-residency trained PAs?

[henryd]

Job and salary wise. Are PAs who completed residencies preferred more?

[EMEDPA]

yes. I hire EMPAs and always rank residency grads higher than non-residency grads.

[Guest JMPA]

so you needed a residency to obtain the same level of skill needed to perform as a PA that most other PAs were able to pick up on the job? what does a residency provide that on the job training doesn't? Are you handicapped and required the extra hand holding? these are the problems with residency for a profession that was designed to have professionals trained and ready for OTJ adaption. residency is a bad move for all PAs except for the select few whom should not be practicing medicine without their had held. Your residency pay is usuary and only saves the programs sponsors. keep your cash america, don't let yourselves be fooled for lower pay, longer hours and cheap labor at your expense.

[EMEDPA]

in emergency medicine PAs without significant prior training and experience can not work at the best jobs. I don't know any new grad pas without residency who are allowed to work main and see whoever and do whatever they want. many physicians today do not want to teach. I have worked as an em pa in 3 states over almost 20 years and never asked to "have my hand held", but each job had specific "physician" and "PA" level patients and procedures. those lines could not be crossed unless you could prove competence at seeing said pts or doing said procedures....however, no one wanted to teach a new pa how to do any of these and they would not accept outside certifications like atls, etc. so catch -22. you can do it if you are good at it, but we won't let you get good at it to our level of satisfaction. that is why I have left 7 jobs over 19 years. each time I hit a scope of practice ceiling I leave. now I work solo. I could have worked this job 20 years ago as a residency grad if I had a procedures list like the one I have built over 20 years, but that was not an option at the time.

[Will352ns]

Here is some perspective on the residency subject.  There are only 50 Post Grad PA programs total and very few of those are actually accredited.  The average number of persons accepted is only 4 (I'm being generous).  That means there are only 200 PA's per cycle that graduate from residencies.  Compare that to number of new grads from PA school.....it's not like there is a whopping number of residency trained PA's out there. 

 

I think that they are great, especially for folks that don't have much experience, but it is far from being a reasonable requirement for new hires.  There just aren't enough slots to go around.

[MythicalBearNole]

The PA career may have began and grew under the intent that every new PA grad were starting their second career with several years of health care experience, however, that may no longer be the case.  Whether good or bad, the average age is getting younger with sometimes less experience.  I may be biased, being a recent grad of the Norwalk/Yale surgical residency, but choosing to do a residency guaranteed that my first year of "on-the-job" training was incredibly high quality and prepared me for a career in surgery, not just a surgery job.  In my current post-residency job, the "real world," there is very little time for in-depth training.  Completing a residency allowed me to have the specialty, location, and salary that I wanted, which I absolutely couldn't have gotten straight from PA school.

[cinntsp]

residency is a bad move for all PAs except for the select few whom should not be practicing medicine without their had held.

What an ignorant comment.

 

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[JohnnyM2]

yes. I hire EMPAs and always rank residency grads higher than non-residency grads.

...unless, of course, they had previous scribe experience, right?

 

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[JohnnyM2]

residency is a bad move for all PAs except for the select few whom should not be practicing medicine without their had held. Your residency pay is usuary and only saves the programs sponsors. keep your cash america, don't let yourselves be fooled for lower pay, longer hours and cheap labor at your expense.

You are, indeed, a dinosaur among men. Now it's time for full power to shields.

 

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[EMEDPA]

...unless, of course, they had previous scribe experience, right?

 

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yup, those folks get hired right away....at weight loss and low-T centers.....:)

[UGoLong]

Thoughts on residencies:

 

Having had more than a few careers, I thought about what is being said here about residencies for PAs. After all, there weren’t residencies for me as a young engineer, or were there?

 

On further reflection, I realized that there had been jobs like residencies. For many people, they were novices who did the grunt work for more senior engineers, learning over time and advancing. Sometimes it was by staying in the same job and other times it required you to move. It wasn’t called a residency, but it’s kind of what it was; you were paid a reasonable salary and you were expected to learn on the job.

 

I went into the service right out of college and that was even more like a residency. You got much more responsibility than you expected, you had resources to call on, and you learned under fire (mine, fortunately, was only figurative). My PA school buddy Stan did go into the service and learned before, during, and after his deployment to Afghanistan.

 

The point is that all new professionals have to learn somewhere. A residency is a pretty good way to do it, but it’s not the only way and, thus far, not even the predominant way. Someday it probably will be. In the meantime, if you don’t find a good residency, go for a job that will let you learn under fire. They are out there; I have one now. You might not stay there for a career, but you will start building the foundation for one.

 

Good luck.

[Guest Paula]

All of this begs the question of who is training/mentoring the new grad PAs once they are on their first job?  From my little world and group practice I am now in I see the physicians have little to no time to mentor a PA (or NP for that matter). It seems employers are looking for some experience already before hiring.  At my clinic we have one full-time family practice physician, 3 IMs, 2 peds and a few locum FPs who come in now and then.  My employer is panicking on how to get enough FP who will mentor and have the collaborative relationships with their ever growing NP/PA staff.  (Mostly NP heavy now).

 

It behooves all of us at some time to give back to the profession by taking students as preceptors and taking a new grad under our wings to help them fly on their own.

 

I was fortunate like UGoLong to have a first job that made me learn under fire with physician off site who visited once a month.  It was the best experience and I learned a lot, mostly under my own due diligence and studying my butt off every night after a day of clinic for my first 3 years of practice.  

[bike mike]

so you needed a residency to obtain the same level of skill needed to perform as a PA that most other PAs were able to pick up on the job?  - Nope, wanted to gain the knowledge and skill at a faster pace

 

what does a residency provide that on the job training doesn't?  - More well rounded training in medical specialty in a relatively short amount of time

 

Are you handicapped and required the extra hand holding? - No and no

 

residency is a bad move for all PAs  - I disagree

 

except for the select few whom should not be practicing medicine without their had held.  -  wow....this is just lame. Good luck to you sunshine!

[BruceBanner]

Hiring preference really depends on the organization---in academic centers or the EM world I think a residency would go a long way.

 

But like I said in your other thread, experience is the currency of hiring and there are many ways to go about getting that. Like UGoLong said, having a job where you learn under fire and/or have a good mentor can go a long way towards increasing your career capital.

 

It just depends on what you want to do. Surgery, EM? Absolutely, I think it'd worth your time. IM/FP? Not really, but that's just my opinion. The reason why is that you can be making a real PA salary while learning on the job and have the same amount of 'employability' and salary potential as the guy/gal who did a residency and made chump change for a year. No doubt you would see a lot of pathology and learn some cool skills, but I'm skeptical that would translate into a broader scope or bigger salary in the IM spectrum.

 

IM/FP employers just need experienced providers to move patients in and out the door. They don't care how you got your experience, as a general rule.

[JohnnyM2]

Consider why PAs apply for a residency in the first place and, also, the result of trying to learn on the job. 1. From all the posts I have read, PAs are often confronted with the line: "Two years prior experience required." But how do you get that experience to start with. Those who have had residency experience generally seem to agree thar a residency or fellowship is one very good way.

2. There have been many posts on the forum from PAs who failed at their first job, or who felt they were failing because they felt unprepared and weren't getting mentored by the physicians they work with. Trying to make it their fault may make a successful I-taught-myself-everything PA feel superior but I can imagine that trying to learn a lot of new things in an unsupprtive environment could be very intimidating. No one wants to be responsible for harming a patient and losing their job and, possibly, their licence at the same tme. 3. Some jobs like EM and surgery, to name two, really aren't good places to learn on the job without close supervision and a supportive learning environment that you will get during residency. 4. Many posts on the forum complain of low pay for new PAs. Pay is often based on proven experience and productivity. A residency can be the best way to get those credentials for many PAs and can easily make up for the pay lost during residency. 5. PA school makes you a generalist, not an expert, regardless of prior HCE. For PAs who don't want to be generalists in, say fm, a residency can be a great way to specialize.

The vast majority of PAs won't do residencies and probably don't need to, but for those who do, it can help get that first (and subsequent ) jobs, increase their value to an employer, increase their pay and job satisfaction, and better prepare them for patient care in certain specialties.

 

[UGoLong]

Regardless of whether you are starting out as a new PA or a new anything else, there will be some employers who will demand experience and others who won't. Some will feel that they don't have to train you, don't have time to train you, or whatever. That's true whether you are a new piano tuner or a new PA. Absolutely every graduate of anything had to stand on that very spot at one time or another.

 

How you deal with this makes all of the difference.

 

If you go for the easy money (which usually is a mirage anyway), then you will be living the same day over and over again for however long you stay in the job. You will learn little along the way and not invest much in making yourself more capable and more marketable.

 

Sometimes it's best to take the tough job that makes you learn, is a challenge, and maybe doesn't pay as much. (Kind of sounds like school, doesn't it?) You don't have to stay there forever. The important thing starting out in any career isn't the money or the fringe benefits, but rather the ability to invest in making YOU more capable just as quickly as you can.

 

Regardless of what you choose to do with your life, you start out with way more potential than experience. It's your assignment to get the right experience, even if there are some hardships involved along the way. In the end, it will be worth it.

[GatorRRT]

Are residences a good idea? For some PAs I'm sure they make sense, but I can't justify taking a massive hit in income to "gain experience", when I know that there are sub-speciality physicians in more rural areas that are begging for providers and as such these physicians are willing to train.

 

Personally I made the decision to make the commute, and as such I'm getting the opportunity to put together an impressive procedures log with no resident competition, as I work at a outlying community hospital.

[andersenpa]

so you needed a residency to obtain the same level of skill needed to perform as a PA that most other PAs were able to pick up on the job? what does a residency provide that on the job training doesn't? Are you handicapped and required the extra hand holding? these are the problems with residency for a profession that was designed to have professionals trained and ready for OTJ adaption. residency is a bad move for all PAs except for the select few whom should not be practicing medicine without their had held. Your residency pay is usuary and only saves the programs sponsors. keep your cash america, don't let yourselves be fooled for lower pay, longer hours and cheap labor at your expense.

 

I echo what some of the others have said in support of residency training. I did my residency in surgery.

ALL PAs are perform at a resident level of function when they first get out of school. They are (or should be) mentored and guided by senior providers (docs and PAs) to help navigate missteps. BC physicians do this as well and bounce things off their senior partners.

 

Residency provides a structured format to accelerate the learning curve and create a more autonomous PA with a broader scope of exposure and depth of experience in a shorter period of time.

 

PA training was designed in a different era with different deployment of PAs. We have expanded to all fields of practice but do not have the capacity to train to those specialties in short duration of PA school. 6 weeks of general surgery to train a surgical PA? I don't think so.

 

Your comments on residency training are way off the mark, but I think you can tell that by the responses you got already.

 

The only thing that's "bad for PAs" is trying to limit them based on a narrow view of what the PA profession "should be", instead of what it actually is, or better yet, can become.