physasst Posted October 23, 2011 Share Posted October 23, 2011 Alright, so I have a serious question for my colleagues here. Have any of you ever left clinical practice entirely? I know Hooker has, but I don't really know too many other PA's that have. I have an opportunity to possibly move into research administration, with oversight over a research staff at a Center focusing on healthcare delivery research. I've thought about this move often, but now that it is a real possibility, I wonder....Will I miss patient contact a lot? Will I miss the interactions? Procedures?? I don't know. My plan would be to still moonlight 1-2 days per month to maintain SOME clinical contact, but I would love to hear from any other PA's who have left clinical practice to see what their thoughts might be. Any thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LESH Posted October 23, 2011 Share Posted October 23, 2011 So if you moonlight you are still seeing patients so you haven't left patient care. I say get out there and do the health policy thing....;) Just sayin'. LesH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
medic25 Posted October 23, 2011 Share Posted October 23, 2011 I left clinical practice for a year or so to oversee our EMS system while the permanent director was deployed to Afghanistan. That year gave me a whole new appreciation of the satisfaction that comes from working with patients. After a few months of nothing but attending meetings, working out budgets and dealing with complaints and HR headaches, I went back to the ED for a moonlighting shift and almost hugged the first chronic alcoholic I saw. Your experience certainly could differ, but from my experience there is little that compares with the satisfaction of clinical medicine in an Emergency Department. While there are certainly rewarding aspects of administration, I never went home with the same great feeling that comes from a challenging case in the ER. When the director returned from deployment, I told him that I'd be giving him the second biggest hug after his wife and kids :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burnpac Posted October 23, 2011 Share Posted October 23, 2011 This is a natural progression of our profession. We are just early in the game. In California many health care organizations are packed with nurses in administrative positions. There are very few PAs doing the same. No wonder that policy in these organizations are NP centric. If you are not at the table, you are what is for dinner, meaning policy is made by those who show up. We need to have PAs in administrative leadership positions, but it will take a while to get there as we are small in the overall scheme of things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KCMA79 Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 I left a clinical role after 18 yrs. of seeing patients everyday. I found I had just run out of steam and the well had gone dry. Fortunately my agency let me move into admin and then run a chem/bio preparedness program. I still saw patients a few days a month just to remind myself I was a PA but never missed seeing patients everyday. I think this is a very individual decision that has many facets that only you can ans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dm123 Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 I suppose you could call it semi- but there are a fair number of job openings doing H&Ps for research, anesthesiology pre-ops, drug studies and the like. Not the whizz-bang of some jobs but puts groceries in the frig. Might at least keep some patient contact as oppose to pencil pushing administrators and sitting through boring meetings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maineapp Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 how does one find such a position? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maineapp Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 how does one find such a position? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
physasst Posted March 17, 2012 Author Share Posted March 17, 2012 Actually, I went through quite a time trying to decide what I wanted to do.....At this point, while I enjoy administration, I find myself wanting to do research more. I am in the process of moving into a full time research position, and in fact am writing up a KL2 and KO8 grant proposal right now.... I have 2 meetings on Monday morning with the chair of HSR and with the administrator of our new research center to discuss a junior faculty position (tenure track).....As far as clinical practice..... meh..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
physasst Posted March 17, 2012 Author Share Posted March 17, 2012 Actually, I went through quite a time trying to decide what I wanted to do.....At this point, while I enjoy administration, I find myself wanting to do research more. I am in the process of moving into a full time research position, and in fact am writing up a KL2 and KO8 grant proposal right now.... I have 2 meetings on Monday morning with the chair of HSR and with the administrator of our new research center to discuss a junior faculty position (tenure track).....As far as clinical practice..... meh..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spectrum Posted March 18, 2012 Share Posted March 18, 2012 How to move to research position? what you need to do to qualify yourself for the research pst? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spectrum Posted March 18, 2012 Share Posted March 18, 2012 How to move to research position? what you need to do to qualify yourself for the research pst? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
physasst Posted March 18, 2012 Author Share Posted March 18, 2012 Finished my doctorate in organizational behaviour/science. For ANY tenure track position here, a doctorate is the bare minimum requirement. I've been publishing over the past few years and I can qualify now for my Assistant Professor rank, which is also a minimum requirement. I missed it by 2 papers last time....and guess what I had 4 papers published in non pub med indexed journals...grrrrr. BTW, for any of you thinking of pursuing academic rank...there are only TWO PA journals that are pub med indexed....JAAPA and the PAEA journal. All the rest, Clinician Reviews, Advance, etc. are NOT. If you care about academic rank...it's a big deal. NOW for the fun part. They don't have anyone here at Mayo researching the stuff that I want to. Workforce research (primarily primary care and the study of interprofessional relationships, medical teams, and medical team dynamics)....I have some meetings coming up to discuss this, cause once I stated what I could do...they are now interested. My doctoral advisor will be helpful...he is regarded as one of the top physician workforce researchers in the country (one of the reasons I chose him)....He's already offered some seed grant money to help entice Mayo as well. Additionally, the head of the Robert Graham Center of the AAFP has already contacted me about working on some research with them examining the relationships of PA's and NP's with FP physicians. Of course there is always the rub....How do I convince them to hire me to do what I want to do? LOL......isn't that always the problem. To start, I am getting 20% protected time to work on Operations Research projects helping to complete mathematical simulations of different inpatient processes..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
physasst Posted March 18, 2012 Author Share Posted March 18, 2012 Finished my doctorate in organizational behaviour/science. For ANY tenure track position here, a doctorate is the bare minimum requirement. I've been publishing over the past few years and I can qualify now for my Assistant Professor rank, which is also a minimum requirement. I missed it by 2 papers last time....and guess what I had 4 papers published in non pub med indexed journals...grrrrr. BTW, for any of you thinking of pursuing academic rank...there are only TWO PA journals that are pub med indexed....JAAPA and the PAEA journal. All the rest, Clinician Reviews, Advance, etc. are NOT. If you care about academic rank...it's a big deal. NOW for the fun part. They don't have anyone here at Mayo researching the stuff that I want to. Workforce research (primarily primary care and the study of interprofessional relationships, medical teams, and medical team dynamics)....I have some meetings coming up to discuss this, cause once I stated what I could do...they are now interested. My doctoral advisor will be helpful...he is regarded as one of the top physician workforce researchers in the country (one of the reasons I chose him)....He's already offered some seed grant money to help entice Mayo as well. Additionally, the head of the Robert Graham Center of the AAFP has already contacted me about working on some research with them examining the relationships of PA's and NP's with FP physicians. Of course there is always the rub....How do I convince them to hire me to do what I want to do? LOL......isn't that always the problem. To start, I am getting 20% protected time to work on Operations Research projects helping to complete mathematical simulations of different inpatient processes..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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