Air Force Physician Assistants?

[JoyC90]

Hi, can anyone tell me what it's like to be a PA in the Air Force? Are the duties of an AF PA any different from the duties of an Army PA? What's the typical day like?

 

Thank you!

[p911sc]

I would like to know as well.

[2010PA]

Now Im just a student, but I am in the Air Force. Most PAs in USAF are utilized for Family Medicine.....so much that most PAs are titled Family Medicine Providers. Now, that doesn't take anything as far as additional taskers PAs may be assigned. AF PAs deploy and have to really adapt from going to a family practice settting to battlefield injury. CSTARS and some 8 week courses of battlefield triage is just not adequate for the demand of PAs overseas. This is where the Army focuses alot of their PAs on. Now the Air Force has Ortho, EM, and soon possibly Psych as specialties so there are opportunities to specialize. But as far as the duties from AF and Army, they only differ by their respective service's needs. Air Force focuses more on Family Medicine, while the Army focuses on the battlefield. Both share common practices, just different environments....Anyone else willing to chime in, please do so....

[Bojax]

Can anyone else comment on their experiences as an Air Force PA? What are your hours like? Duties? How many patients do you see a day? How is the EMR? Days off? Do you have any choice as to where you're stationed? Thanks!

[jmj11]

Take this for what it is worth as I separated 15 years ago. It was one of my most favorite job experiences. We hat 30 days off a year, plus bonus days for productivity (easy to obtain as phone calls were included in our count of 18 patient contacts per day). Plus the base commander gave us gifts for good performances such as an entire week off at Christmas. The work load, in our case, was the easiest of my career. Sick call at 7 AM, done in clinic by 3:30. I was in a basketball league at lunch, played for 90 minutes each day.

 

I rotated every other week between the Primary Care Clinic and the ER. In the Primary Care Clinic I created a headache clinic two days a week. Sometimes the ER was very busy, especially during Gulf War I when we had providers deployed to other bases and we had a shortage. ER became the overflow peds and primary care clinic.

 

Best friendships of my life were during my Air Force years.

 

I got the base of my choice as my first assignment (K. I. Sawyer), however, once the base was on the closure list, I had no choice. I was being assigned to a remote (without my wife and kids) in the Nevada desert. I separated.

 

Everything that my recruiter told me came true.

[Bojax]

Thanks for the reply JMJ! I wonder if its still that good though? Any active USAF PAs out there?

[Will352ns]

Take this for what it is worth as I separated 15 years ago. It was one of my most favorite job experiences. We hat 30 days off a year, plus bonus days for productivity (easy to obtain as phone calls were included in our count of 18 patient contacts per day). Plus the base commander gave us gifts for good performances such as an entire week off at Christmas. The work load, in our case, was the easiest of my career. Sick call at 7 AM, done in clinic by 3:30. I was in a basketball league at lunch, played for 90 minutes each day.

 

I rotated every other week between the Primary Care Clinic and the ER. In the Primary Care Clinic I created a headache clinic two days a week. Sometimes the ER was very busy, especially during Gulf War I when we had providers deployed to other bases and we had a shortage. ER became the overflow peds and primary care clinic.

 

Best friendships of my life were during my Air Force years.

 

I got the base of my choice as my first assignment (K. I. Sawyer), however, once the base was on the closure list, I had no choice. I was being assigned to a remote (without my wife and kids) in the Nevada desert. I separated.

 

Everything that my recruiter told me came true.

 

Umm, not so much anymore. Most AF PA's are in Family Practice. They typically work 0720-1700 M-F. I'm not sure how many patients they see a day, but I would say it is about 20. There is no bonuses for productivity and T-Cons are just an expected part of the day, certainly doesn't lighten your schedule. The days of pile in sick call died for most places many years ago. Everything is pretty much appointment only.

 

What the other folks said about specialties is pretty accurate. As far as deployments, it varies based on where you are.

 

The type days you described 15 years ago are a thing of the past. All the branches are smaller and have been supporting/fighting a shooting war for 11 years now. Do more with less.

 

To be honest, I was in 15 years ago and I don't remember it being like that. Sure, there were/are occasional "goal days", but 90 min lunch and leaving 1530.....nowhere (hospital) that I ever worked. But then, I was an enlisted puke....still am.

 

I wouldn't paint that as a very accurate picture, at all.

[LESH]

http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123301913#.T7KE_X2rZCc.facebook fyi

[lkrdrgn]

Anyone know that if they will be opening this to officers in the future? I am currently a 13S1 and want to get out. I applied beofre but got waitlisted =/

[brannow]

I'm pretty sure that this coming cycle they will start accepting officers for cross training. Contact a guy named Kevin Smith at AFPC, he is the IPAP guru and can answer any question you have or point you in the direction to which you can find it.

[3GeronimoPA]

With this new patient care model, if you're doing Family Medicine in the AF you are going to see 22 patients a day and you are going to be spending a couple hours each day catching up on your notes. Not to mention that you are going to have to do PT and play Air Force Reindeer Games in your "spare time". I've got one my former classmates working at an AFB in the NW. She cried on a mutual friend's shoulder when she described her job to him. I'm not saying she's the most resilient person and that AF PAs work so hard they cry. I'm saying the hours are hard and as an Air Force or Army PA, but in the AF you are working horse to the beat of someone else's (Clinic OIC's) drum. The quality of life surely will have it's positives in comparison to what Army PAs deal with and the autonomy in the Army is unique (for 2 real world missions in 2011 my supervising physician was on a different continent) and mentor-ship of medics is much greater. What I will tell you is the ability to get to do remote medicine independently and manage war trauma independently is something that is much more common in the army. HOWEVER the Specialist Corps of the Army (PAs, Physical Therapists, OTs, and Dieticians) is now real big into forcing PAs into doing non-medical jobs such as commanding companies and admin stuff. I've never told anyone this before (it's about to become a more frequent happening though) but if you don't have 10 years of prior enlisted experience in the military and you want to make being a practicing military PA a career, steer clear of the Army. This is no longer the place for people who want to do medicine continuously. If you have 10+ years of prior service, you won't make it past Major anyways so you can tell Branch to shove it up their yin-yang when they try to assign you to an admin billet so the Army wouldn't be too bad in that scenario. The Army push is to "diversify" PAs to the extent that we can compete for promotions beyond Colonel etc. I don't hate them for it, but I've been in for 12 years and deployed 5 times. I'm not diversifying dude. Long story short, if you want to work hard for your country as a PA for 20 years without a break in medicine, don't go Army. If you just want to spend 5 years doing remote medicine, doing initial stabilization on war trauma, training medics, jumping out of airplanes, camping in woods, doing arctic medicine, tropical medicine, shoot some stuff and maybe blow some **** up then get out, the Army's still doing civilian accessions and you should give it a shot. Get Airborne school in your contract and start doing PT.