alcornt Posted April 1, 2015 Share Posted April 1, 2015 I haven't found too many posts regarding this issue and I am genuinely curious if any of you can comment regarding how much time per week you spend in your specialty and how much vacation time you get annually. I am way excited to become a PA, but I am wondering how much time I will have with my family in the years to come. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alcornt Posted April 2, 2015 Author Share Posted April 2, 2015 Did I post this question in the wrong forum? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ohiovolffemtp Posted April 2, 2015 Share Posted April 2, 2015 This is totally dependent upon your specialty. Each has it's own culture, expectation on hours, call, etc. I do EM. 3 12's/week may sound easy but: 1) every other weekend, 2) nights, so expect anywhere from 0.5 to 1.5 days to really be functional during normal family waking hours. Having an understanding partner is critical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator rev ronin Posted April 2, 2015 Administrator Share Posted April 2, 2015 I was in a job where I was consistently working 50-55 hours per week in family med, and have recently switched jobs for a bit less benefits, but where I'm clocking in right at 40 now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goose37 Posted April 2, 2015 Share Posted April 2, 2015 With my situation, I put in a lot of hours both at work and with work duties at home. However, when its done, its done. Think the trick is being invested when you are at home. Still doing 60+ hours a week, have a newborn, leave the house at 530 every morning...but still feel that I get good quality time with my wife and baby. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenmood Posted April 2, 2015 Share Posted April 2, 2015 I work 3-4 12 hour shifts per week. I leave my house at 5:30am and generally leave on time at the end of the day. I cover weekends about once per month and do a couple nights per month (slowly getting more of those). I get 28 days of PTO per year, almost all of which was used at the end of 2014 for FMLA after my now-six-month-old baby was born. On weeks when I work four days straight I feel a little disconnected from my family routine because the baby and husband are sleeping when I leave and sometimes one of them is sleeping when I get home. But this is balanced by long stretches of time off when I don't have to use vacation, and can spend all day with them. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boatswain2PA Posted April 2, 2015 Share Posted April 2, 2015 I haven't found too many posts regarding this issue and I am genuinely curious if any of you can comment regarding how much time per week you spend in your specialty and how much vacation time you get annually. I am way excited to become a PA, but I am wondering how much time I will have with my family in the years to come. It is just like any other job you are going to have. You will miss out on work due to your family, and you will miss out on family due to your work. It's part of being an adult in the workforce. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alcornt Posted April 2, 2015 Author Share Posted April 2, 2015 Thank you for your comments. What would you all recommend as far as the following: 1. Specialty that allows most time with family. (Ex. Not a lot of on call or weekends/holidays) 2. How to land the kind of gig that greenmood posted about. (Are they rare or not?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenmood Posted April 2, 2015 Share Posted April 2, 2015 Many outpatient jobs don't require call or weekend coverage, and a lot of them are closed on holidays. The trade is that many of them are M-F 9-5 gigs, and if you want time off during the week you have to use your PTO. Someone who has experience outpatient should comment because I don't really know what I'm talking about there. As for the rarity of my position... I think it depends on where you look. We're hiring and have been for a while. There are lots of hospital-based 12 hour shift jobs out there for PAs. No job is perfect. The trade off for my position is that while I usually leave on time thanks to decent time management skills, I will never be able to prevent the 5:55pm admit or the complication that just kept me on the floor until 8pm while the rest of my team finished in the OR. Figure out what you want and what you're willing to compromise, and then shop around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFarnsworth Posted April 5, 2015 Share Posted April 5, 2015 Thank you for your comments. What would you all recommend as far as the following: 1. Specialty that allows most time with family. (Ex. Not a lot of on call or weekends/holidays) 2. How to land the kind of gig that greenmood posted about. (Are they rare or not?) 1. Dermatology has pretty set hours with no call or weekends (usually). Any clinic job has somewhat predicatble hours. 2. Urgent care, EM usually have those kinds of shifts. They are pretty common here in California. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fammedpa Posted May 8, 2015 Share Posted May 8, 2015 I'm not sure if you are male or female, but here is my experience as a working PA Mom. Starting out I took a job that required some weekend call (mostly hospital rounds, otherwise not bad, didn't really get called at night). It wasn't family medicine though (which is what I wanted to do). A couple years later I found a family medicine job with no call and only some early evenings/weekends at an urgent care. It was an ok job for someone without a lot of experience because I mostly just did overflow at the clinic and then urgent care (and filled in some at a work-comp clinic) so I had a lot of supervision (if needed), but I got bored. I got tired of just doing acute care (not why I went into fam med). The doctors would basically pawn off patients they didn't want to deal with. I didn't get to do any follow-up so I never really new if what I did made them better, etc. I didn't really do any health maintenance/preventative med. So career wise it wasn't great, but during the time I worked there I had 2 kids within 2 years so it was nice to not have a ton of responsibility. HOWEVER, after having baby number 2 I just couldn't handle working full-time (this is a trend for working moms, they gradually reduce hours with each child, unless they are the breadwinner and daddy can stay home). My husband is also a PA, and having a dual career family is hard. I know a lot of dual physician couples where one ends up giving up their career to stay home with the kids, because when you both have to take call, etc, it is HARD. I really felt like I needed to focus on being a Mom and I wasn't super fulfilled with my job, so we moved to a rural location where my husband works full-time and I work part-time. He is the only full-time provider, works rural health clinic, ER call, inpatient. I work 2.5 days a week doing clinic only. I get to have my own practice (have gone from mainly doing acute care, to almost exclusively doing chronic care and prev med). I don't take any call (expect for occasional day ER call when I'm already in clinic) or work any weekends, but my husband makes up for it. There is no way we could both do call, it would be too hard on our family. So it may seem like I have the ideal set-up now, but honestly I'm trying to figure out a way to either stay home full time or take a call only position (like 1 weekend a month) so that I don't need daycare. I have not had any luck finding good quality childcare plus it's just really hard to run a household when both husband and wife work demanding and emotionally stressful jobs. I used to be VERY career orientated, but motherhood will change that (or at least it did for me). I want to stay in the workforce to keep up my skills, but feel like I REALLY need to be home with my kids while they are little. I want more kids but can't imagine another one right now with our current childcare situation. So it really depends on your interests and your family situation. If you have a lot of extended family support that makes a huge difference. If your spouse doesn't have a job that requires a lot of nights/weekend/travel, that makes a huge difference as well. There really is no perfect situation and like a previous poster said, there are trade-offs. I've had a low-stress, low responsibly job, but was bored. More responsibly is more fulfilling but can be more stressful. You priorities are likely to change depending on your season if life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilovelost Posted May 8, 2015 Share Posted May 8, 2015 I've kind of been thinking about this - starting PA school in next few months. I'm 23 and would prefer to wait until about 30 to have 1-2 kids. On the one hand, I think it'd be really cool to specialize in something like surgery or emergency medicine... but I'm not sure how well that works with family life. I also have a lot of questions regarding things like pregnancy and working in certain specialties - limitations, etc. I've never seen a pregnant surgeon before. These weren't things I was really considering when I first decided to be a PA... but the closer it gets to becoming a reality, the more I've started thinking about it. My prince charming is still figuring out his life :p so not sure what his career schedule will look like yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenmood Posted May 11, 2015 Share Posted May 11, 2015 I've kind of been thinking about this - starting PA school in next few months. I'm 23 and would prefer to wait until about 30 to have 1-2 kids. On the one hand, I think it'd be really cool to specialize in something like surgery or emergency medicine... but I'm not sure how well that works with family life. I also have a lot of questions regarding things like pregnancy and working in certain specialties - limitations, etc. I've never seen a pregnant surgeon before. These weren't things I was really considering when I first decided to be a PA... but the closer it gets to becoming a reality, the more I've started thinking about it. My prince charming is still figuring out his life :p so not sure what his career schedule will look like yet. Plenty of pregnant surgeons. I see pregnant residents running around here day and night. Two of the attendings just had babies. When I was a student one of my surgeon preceptors was 8 months pregnant. She put headphones on her belly and played Mozart for the baby while she operated. Your limitations depend on your pregnancy and health. I had absolutely no issues while I was pregnant except for some edema handily minimized with compression hosiery. A resident I work with was so sick in early pregnancy that she would step out of the patients' rooms on rounds to vomit. Understandably, she also struggled in the OR and ended up on some prescription anti-emetics. Lots of variables. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
misadventuresinmedicine Posted May 22, 2015 Share Posted May 22, 2015 Several PAs that I know and I all got together and started our own side businesses in skincare. Several PAs, MDs, RNs now working part time or even not at all because of it. A friend who's a hospitalist PA has a husband who's a stay at home dad and she is about to drop to part time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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