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Umbpa hey sorry so late to respond, but software engineers, Nassau county police officers, accountants, many more but I see what your saying. Not all programs end with 100k in debt some programs are very affordable, I attend Sophie Davis and the tuition for the entire program is 22k. I understand my program is probably the exception though, other programs I looked into were double and triple that amount.

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Just become a US senator or the president.  No experience needed and you are set for life after you get voted out or finish your term.  Health care guaranteed for life and a nice pension.  You don't even need to let anyone know what grades you got in college. 

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Appreciate your opinions and experience, everyone. Fortunately, I had physicians and PAs in my family to talk to this thanksgiving, or else I might have been scared into ditching my PA ambitions. I do wish there were more older PAs on here to provide some positive counterpoint to the disproportionate number of negative posts on this thread. Happy holidays!

I agree I do my rotations all over New York City in multiple hospitals and the PAs I've worked with senior and newbies are all very happy with their career choice, autonomy, respect, salary etc. I guess it varies depending on location and field. I can not wait to graduate and begin working as a PA!

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I have talked to a ton of PAs in one of the least PA-friendly states (Ohio), and all of them absolutely love their job to death. Sure, a couple of them felt like they were busy nonstop at work, but never overwhelmed to the point that they regret their decision to become a PA. It's interesting to read what the people have been saying in this thread. Not saying I agree or disagree with anyone, but just thought I'd add my two cents.

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That is definitely a retrograde movement. Big surprise is waiting there. Current NIH funding is about 7-8% and they will compete with professional PhDs and MD/PhDs for funding. I could see getting a degree to teach, since majority of old school were not even Masters and you need one to teach in a master's program.

most of these folks are already employed at the CDC, FDA, VA, etc and all they need to go from assistant clinical researcher to lead clinical researcher is a recognized doctorate. many alums of my program do full time research as lead investigators. several have landed prestigious post-doc fellowships, etc

one became the #2 guy (assistant surgeon general) at the us public health service.

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An older gentleman who works as a PA and PT told me at work "you're young just go to med school! ". After telling him my reasons he completely agreed with me. Not everyone wants or should be a doctor. This forum and the few PAs on SDN all seem to say the same thing because of their choices. No chance do I ever want to be a surgeon and go through that MD/DO training. Just because I want to be in medicine and I am younger doesn't justify a reason to just "go to med school". Thats a humongous committment that I knew early on in undergrad and I for sure wanted no part in it. I wanted a job where I could help people, the ability to make a great salary, and no more than a few years in school. Take a look at the forum posts. It's the same few people saying the same thing over and over. Not everyone wants the headache that comes with med school/being a doc. Some do. You know who you are.

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Take a look at the forum posts. It's the same few people saying the same thing over and over. Not everyone wants the headache that comes with med school/being a doc. Some do. You know who you are.

Agree there! It really is the same few. There's nothing wrong with a young person wanting to be a PA. We should be met with encouragement if it's what we really want. I think haters just want a golden star sticker if we're unhappy ten years down the road.

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Agree there! It really is the same few. There's nothing wrong with a young person wanting to be a PA. We should be met with encouragement if it's what we really want. I think haters just want a golden star sticker if we're unhappy ten years down the road.

it's not just age that we have a problem with generally, it's inexperience. if a 25 yr old paramedic or nurse wants to become a pa, more power to them. they know what they are getting into. if a 22 yr old candy stripper who has never had a job or lived anywhere but with her parents or in a college dorm wants to become a pa "to help doctors and spend more time with patients" because "doctors work too hard and pas always have better schedules and work/life balance" she has no idea what she is getting into. 3 years later she is posting threads here about how everyone treats her poorly, she can't find a cosmetic derm job in her town of NYC that pays 100k to start like she expected, and she has failed pance twice and wants to know how to study for it.

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Agree there! It really is the same few. There's nothing wrong with a young person wanting to be a PA. We should be met with encouragement if it's what we really want. I think haters just want a golden star sticker if we're unhappy ten years down the road.

if a young person wants to be a pa they should work in healthcare at a professional level for a few years first to make sure they know what they are getting into and that they like healthcare. a 22 yr old who has shadowed a pa for 16 hrs has no clue. there has to be a better reason to become a pa than 2 yrs post-bs for a 100k paycheck. as i mentioned above this forum is full of folks who get 1/2 way through pa school, hate it, are barely passing, but can't drop out because they are too far in debt

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EMEDPA, in each of those cases it's certainly on them if they aren't happy or are slacking in performance at a professional level. However, just as they wouldn't be justified to come on here and complain about how they weren't warned, it's not justifiable to group young people up as inexperienced and push them away. Anyways, I know that you mean well; we all have a right to think how we would like and this is the right place to do that.

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EMEDPA, in each of those cases it's certainly on them if they aren't happy or are slacking in performance at a professional level. However, just as they wouldn't be justified to come on here and complain about how they weren't warned, it's not justifiable to group young people up as inexperienced and push them away. Anyways, I know that you mean well; we all have a right to think how we would like and this is the right place to do that.

sure. there are experienced young folks out there who I would encourage to look at PA school.former military folks, civilian medics and nurses, etc. many/most are not at this level. the typical "straight from college to pa school" crew typically has met the very min requirements for low level (500 hrs as a cna) experience and many become substandard/clueless pas and bring down the reputation of the rest of us working in this profession. to most docs all PAs are interchangeable. they don't recognize the difference between a former er nurse and a former cna. if they work with the former clueless cna first they won't want to hire the former er nurse because " all PAs are idiots so I will just hire an np instead".

the entire concept of the pa profession is to take an experienced medic/nurse/resp. therapist/etc and to build on that solid foundation. if there is no foundation, the learning curve is too steep. sure, these folks can pass pance, but in practice many of them are useless withhout intensive OJT or a residency. most docs don't like to teach so the clueless new grad wallows in mediocrity and bounces from bad job to bad job, always working at places that the docs require that they present every pt and the doc sees every pt. Might as well be a medical assistant for all the autonomy they have.they then think this is normal for pas, tell their friends about their bad jobs, and all the terrible myths about pas get perpetuated like "doctors have to check their work and see all their pts". these folks are Assistants in the true meaning of the word.

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No offense but I feel you are largely generalizing your entire profession. I know some truly brilliant students who aced MCATs and chose the PA route instead. My mentor who is a critical care PA has stated that the profession is changing and it's a great thing to get more people, younger folks, excited about PA school. I feel like being a PA 15-20 years ago was really different than being a PA now. On a side note, Yeah let's hire the NP who went to school part time online than the PA who went through a rigorous program. A one year residency should be a requirement IMO but heck what do I know. Everyones entitled to their own opinion.

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No offense but I feel you are largely generalizing your entire profession. I know some truly brilliant students who aced MCATs and chose the PA route instead. My mentor who is a critical care PA has stated that the profession is changing and it's a great thing to get more people, younger folks, excited about PA school. I feel like being a PA 15-20 years ago was really different than being a PA now. On a side note, Yeah let's hire the NP who went to school part time online than the PA who went through a rigorous program. A one year residency should be a requirement IMO but heck what do I know. Everyones entitled to their own opinion.

acing MCATs has no bearing on ability to be a pa or an md. that speaks only to academic ability to take and pass written tests, not medical knowledge or applicable skills.

being a PA 20 years ago was bery different than being a PA today in many ways. 20 years ago you knew what you were getting with a new grad. today there is a lot more variability, and not in a good way. all most docs know about PA vs NP is that "NPs at least were nurses first so they have some prior experience". I bet 1 doc in ten knows the difference in schooling between a PA and an NP and knows that we get much harder didactics and 4x the clinical rotation time. I agree with you about the residency requirement. it's coming. it has to because the quality of new grads is going down.

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I hear you. That makes sense. I guess I misunderstood. Regardless, the ER and critical care PAs that I have shadowed have all done residencies. They are extremely great providers. Why aren't PAs called APs instead? Advanced Providers vs Physician Assistants? Who knows. None of the PAs I shadowed were dependent on a supervising physician. Especially in critical care.

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I hear you. That makes sense. I guess I misunderstood. Regardless, the ER and critical care PAs that I have shadowed have all done residencies. They are extremely great providers. Why aren't PAs called APs instead? Advanced Providers vs Physician Assistants? Who knows. None of the PAs I shadowed was dependent on a supervising physician. Esepcially in critical care.

this is pretty rare. there are probably less than 100 em residency grads and an equal # of critical care residency grads in practice today. there just were not that many programs until a few years ago and many programs only take 2-4 students/year.

I saw an ad recently for a job for an em pa that said "must be residency trained in em and have passed the caq and possess a masters degree". I sent the recruiter something saying the pool of folks who have all 3 is probably a grand total of 10 pas nationwide. most residency grads don't have an ms because they attended residency before the ms was typical. only 200 or so folks(many on this forum) have passed the em caq. many of the oldtime em pas don't take the em caq because they feel it won't help them at this point in their careers if they are 55+ yrs old(as many of the really good ones are).

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I hear you. That makes sense. I guess I misunderstood. Regardless, the ER and critical care PAs that I have shadowed have all done residencies. They are extremely great providers. Why aren't PAs called APs instead? Advanced Providers vs Physician Assistants? Who knows. None of the PAs I shadowed were dependent on a supervising physician. Especially in critical care.

I understand what you are saying here. they were legally affiliated with a doc who did chart review, etc but no one micromanaged their daily workflow. that is how it should be. nothing else is acceptable for an experiened provider. all new grads need some degree of oversight but many places make PAs do this for their entire careers. I don't work at places like that anymore. in fact I don't see a physician on the vast majority of my shifts. working solo is awesome. there is a boss of record out there somewhere but they have zero input into real time decisions I make. often they don''t even read the charts for weeks afterthe pt has already been seen.

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Yup. That's what truly inspired me to take on this role. She's such an amazing clinician. The residency for critical care was done when the group had a residency program. After seeing her workflow everyday I knew it would be more than sufficient for me. Very intense running to stat anesthesia calls, giving orders constantly to the nurses who page her, bronchs, central lines, a lines, wphew I was impressed. She was essentially a doctor who went home. Her attending would talk to all of us interested (Med School, PA, CRNA, NP) and give us advice. His own kid is in PA school and he warned us to stay away from medicine these days. We all have excellent grades and could be canidates for med school (heck I have higher pre req grades than all my buds in medical school) but I really don't want that life. They wanted nothing more in life than to be a physician. People like this exist. It's a rare but strong passion that would keep someone going during the arduous process that is medical school/residency. I would honestly only be going that far for the money. Prestige? Eh the docs can keep that. That's all they got in life. Let them soak in it. Work/life balance. Something people cherish and something others could care less about. On another note, the ER PA whose dad was a surgeon told me "I saw what my dads everyday life was like, not a chance."

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Yup. That's what truly inspired me to take on this role. She's such an amazing clinician. The residency for critical care was done when the group had a residency program. After seeing her workflow everyday I knew it would be more than sufficient for me. Very intense running to stat anesthesia calls, giving orders constantly to the nurses who page her, bronchs, central lines, a lines, wphew I was impressed. She was essentially a doctor who went home. Her attending would talk to all of us interested (PA, CRNA) and give us advice. His own kid is in PA school and he warned us to stay away from medicine these days. We all have excellent grades and could be canidates for med school but I really don't want that life. The ER PA whose dad was a surgeon told me "I saw what my dads everyday life was like, not a chance"

my dad was a doc(neuro) and I didn't want his life. what I didn't know then is that I would be working harder as a pa than I would have if I had gone the doc route and worked em. he was home every day for dinner. I almost never am. he worked 45-55 hrs/week. I often work 60 and drive 1.5-3 hrs one way to get to a site that uses PAs appropriately.

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Dang that drive is killer. The EM pas I shadowed worked 3 12s...and they all worked great with their supervising physician. If they ever needed advice he was so kind and essentially just signed everything they needed. All in all they loved what they did. the only one who ever seemed bitter was a friend of mine who is a PA. She tanked her MCAT and did NOT want to go DO (really ignorant reasoning, that pre-med mentality actually). She seemed unhappy but I guess you find that everywhere. Initially I wanted to do Pharmacy. PA is exactly how much I want out of medicine.

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