Potential job change - input needed!

[clw980]

Good Afternoon! 

 

I am beginning my pre-PA school journey and an opportunity came up for me to apply for a new position in my field and I am not sure whether I should pursue it or not. I am currently an audiologist that works from home. My current position is not very demanding and is flexible so it would provide me with plenty of time to study while I take some prerequisite courses over the next 1.5-2 years. However, my current position involves very limited patient care. With the position I am considering I would be seeing patients full-time which would give me the extra patient care experience as an audiologist, but may limit the amount I can spend on other things (ie. studying, shadowing, volunteering etc.). I have considered keeping my current job and trying to find something part-time that would allow me to accumulate some recent patient care experience, but since I do travel some and I will be taking classes on the weekends it has been difficult to find something that I can fit in consistently. What do you think would be the better choice? (I should also add that I did work clinically for approximately 2.5 years full-time as a clinical audiologist about 2.5 years ago before I took my current position. When I apply this experience will be about 3.5-4.5 years old. I also worked as a medical assistant for approximately 1 year part-time approximately 11 years ago and as a newborn hearing screener part-time in the neonatal intensive care unit from about 2006-2010).

 

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

[Guest MedLib42]

On the one hand, more direct care experience is always more competitive, especially the more varied the experiences are. However, in your case, I don't know if I'd worry about accruing more - your clinical experience that you had for about 2.5 years, if you worked full time, I'm guessing might put you at or above 4,000 hours. Your experience as an MA and newborn screener for so long probably gives you a couple thousand more (at least), which, if they were good quality direct care experiences, would put you well above the minimum requirement for pretty much any school. I wouldn't worry so much that your current position has more limited patient contact. 

 

It sounds like you're worried about the experiences not being recent enough, but that will depend on the school. I applied with the majority of my patient care experience being about 10 years old, the most recent being 3 years old at the time of application, and all of it was accepted. While some schools state they want recent patient care, I found that most of them consider recent to be within the past few years, while others will consider any patient care whether it's recent or not. Double check with the schools you're applying to regarding recent patient care requirements, but I think you should be fine.