Why did you become a PA and not a physician?

[EMEDPA]

emedpa, where im at i see doctors being swallowed up into hospital aligned practice groups, and groups being consolidated into bigger groups. from what ive read from you, it sounds like your career has been spent working for groups. does that situation lend towards better pay and benefits, and is that kind of situation becoming the model for how PAs are going to fit in to healthcare from here forward? .

in my limited experience both pa's and docs do better when they are not hospital employees and instead work for an independent group which contracts with the hospital.

at my facility the avg pa who works for the hospital makes 40k less/yr than the avg pa working in a group. our benefits/retirement are also better than the hospital employees. I think the future will be bright for pa's with opportunities for govt service, private group jobs, as well as hospital based jobs. it is likely that those pa's working in primary care will be govt or hospital employees in large part in the future and the private specialty groups will become more integrated with larger #s of pa's as we are cost effective.

[EMEDPA]

EMED- was o chem really THAT intimidating that it influenced your entire career path? TBH o-chem was one of the easier chem courses, not sure where it gets it's bad reputation from. Ironically, it is now required for many/most PA programs.

to an 18 yr old? yup. to me today? nope. I used to feel the same way about physics until I took a full yr in preparation for applying to medschool 9 yrs ago and got an A all 3 terms. Life intervened and I decided at the time I couldn't both be a good father and husband and a doc so I let medschool go. if the timing had been better I would have applied for the lecom bridge but it didn't open for 7 more years. now I'm doing an academic doctorate( DHSc) with a global health emphasis with future plans for overseas work.

[primadonna22274]

Life does have a way of intervening. Make no mistake ladies: I am most likely giving up having kids ever by choosing to selfishly pursue my dream of becoming a physician. This is much less important to me than it is to many other women (although admittedly an issue with my husband). I am aware that women do both, but I honestly don't know how. IMO women who do both have a spouse who can support a family--but I have always been the primary breadwinner. I need to work--financially and emotionally--work is what keeps me sane.

My ex was fond of saying "Never confuse having a career with having a life." That's fine if it's the philosophy to which one ascribes, but for me my work is part and parcel of what makes up ME. Sure there are many other things that I fully enjoy--music, arts, cooking, baking, teaching, etc.--but if I could not practice medicine I would lose a crucial piece of my identity.

Not so for many happy PAs.

Figure out what you are and be that.

:) Lisa

[NoClinic4Me]

Just as it reads above. And, I mean no offense by it.

 

Late to the game but:

 

1. did non-science UG (nursing; would have had to take too many BS science courses)

2. Physics

3. MCAT has nothing to do with medicine

4. Time commitment

5. Cost and lost wages between the two

6. stress (mine is less than any doc I know; I'm sure there are exceptions).

Those are a few of the many. I am happy with what I did and wouldn't change it. Now law school is still something I think about.....

 

Pat

[mackjacks]

I'm 22 and starting PA school this summer. Some individuals on this forum feel that us youngsters should go to med school and leave PA for those with a lot of experience who want to transition into a new role and more responsibility, which I understand, but being a PA fits perfectly with other goals I have in life. I want to be a PA because I'd like to have kids around 30 and if I went to med school I'd still be a resident then (my mom didn't have me until 40 and my experiences make me feel like being a younger parent is preferable). In addition, I want to be married and settled down with a house and getting ahead financially as soon as possible. I don't want to have to move to wherever I'd match as a resident. Being a MD/DO seems to be getting less profitable with medicaid/medicare reimbursement issues and everything going on with restructuring US healthcare. Although it might become less flexible, I apprecite the lateral flexibility that is inherent in the PA profession. I feel ready to be settled down in a career, in addition to other reasons. I don't feel any need to ever be the "top of the totem pole" but I do worry that in the future when I am in my 40's+ I might wish to be independent. Hopefully I can be working in a situation with a great SP and have a lot of autonomy.

[sunny2spot]

I'm in the same boat. I just graduated at 24 years old and wrestled with the PA vs. MD question even up until my senior year of college. I took the MCAT and did terribly (as I'd predicted) because I'm terrible at standardized tests, especially ones that have nothing to do with my interests. (I did fine with O-chem.)

 

Like others have said, I can't fully express how valuable the lateral flexibility of being a PA is. I'm starting my first job soon in emergency medicine where I can stay for as long or as short a time as I want and then move on to pediatrics, or derm, or oncology, or whatever else I feel like doing. This was huge for my peers and I while searching for jobs. Apply for any job you think you'd enjoy! I'm young and eager to put in the hours right now, so EMed makes sense because I don't have kids or anything else that demands my time. If I went to med school and wanted to do EMed, that would be a HUGE life commitment.

 

I see the possibility that I may eventually want to go the MD route, since I crave autonomy and independence once I'm confident and self-sufficient. But right now, I'm about to start a job that's going to pay me very well to essentially be a student on rotation again. And that's another perk -- most of your training is on-the-job and well-paid. Can't beat that.