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PA school 3 yrs plus 1 year prereqs - Med school 4 yrs plus residency?


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Currently I am a substitute teacher. I am thinking of pursuing a career as a Physician Assistant (hate that name, but love the job description). I have noticed that I have to take Anatomy, Physiology, Microbiology and possibly Biochemistry as pre-requisites to get in, which will take a year. Then I have to get a year or more of health care experience. Then the PA programs themselves are nearly three years long (!). I understand that medical training is arduous, but doesn't this length of training and pre-requisites seem rather close to medical school?

 

Is it fair to say that medical school is just one extra year plus residency? Please enlighten me regarding some of the major differences between physician assistant training and physician training.

 

Thank you for any information!

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The pre reqs for med school and PA school are getting closer to each other every year. However, there are still PA programs that do not require micro and bio, nor do they specify any sort of chemistry (UW/Medex, one of the top schools, is an example). I don't know of any med schools that don't require a stringent chemistry background.

 

So one primary difference that I can think of off the bat is that there are PA schools that will give an applicant tangible credit for their previous medical experience. Essentially, they allow your health care experience to count as proof positive that you can handle the demands of PA school. Again, I cite Medex as one of those schools. (I am a student in their program). I don't know of any med school in the US that will say "you were a Navy Corpsman for 10 years with a strong basis in emergency medicine and surgical medicine, then you were a paramedic for 12 years...you can skip a bunch of the science classes" PA school still does. Or at least some of them.

 

Additionally..the shortest residency of med school that I am aware of is 3 years. So in 2-4 years I can go from just starting my medical education to out in the clinic seeing patients. The fastest a med student can do that is 7 years. That still seems to be a pretty large difference in the two programs. I started with a lot of experience and very little college in winter term of 2009. First two terms were part time, then I went full time. I am set to graduate from PA school (if all goes well) in June of 2013. I will have a bachelor's degree in Clinical Health Science and be eligible to begin my Masters on line while I am working full time as a PA. If I attempted med school I wouldn't have my pre reqs done until June of 2013, then hope to get into med school in fall of 2013, graduate 2017, residency would finish 2020. I'll be practicing medicine as a PA, with 7 years of experience before I would be fully cut loose as a brand new doctor. I am looking to graduate with about 70,000 in debt. That will be paid off in the time I would have been graduating with around 200,000 in debt. At my age, the time line is just too short. If I was younger, the story would be different.

 

good luck

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I'm aware of the movement to change Physician Assistant back to the original Physician Associate and I've read a couple of articles about it. I don't know if Physician Associate is much better than Physician Assistant. Something like Paramedic Practitioner might more recognizable by the general public (and it goes along with Nurse Practictioner, sort of). Someone should hire a linguist to come up with a really good and approproate name.

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The pre reqs for med school and PA school are getting closer to each other every year. However, there are still PA programs that do not require micro and bio, nor do they specify any sort of chemistry (UW/Medex, one of the top schools, is an example). I don't know of any med schools that don't require a stringent chemistry background.

 

So one primary difference that I can think of off the bat is that there are PA schools that will give an applicant tangible credit for their previous medical experience. Essentially, they allow your health care experience to count as proof positive that you can handle the demands of PA school. Again, I cite Medex as one of those schools. (I am a student in their program). I don't know of any med school in the US that will say "you were a Navy Corpsman for 10 years with a strong basis in emergency medicine and surgical medicine, then you were a paramedic for 12 years...you can skip a bunch of the science classes" PA school still does. Or at least some of them.

 

Additionally..the shortest residency of med school that I am aware of is 3 years. So in 2-4 years I can go from just starting my medical education to out in the clinic seeing patients. The fastest a med student can do that is 7 years. That still seems to be a pretty large difference in the two programs. I started with a lot of experience and very little college in winter term of 2009. First two terms were part time, then I went full time. I am set to graduate from PA school (if all goes well) in June of 2013. I will have a bachelor's degree in Clinical Health Science and be eligible to begin my Masters on line while I am working full time as a PA. If I attempted med school I wouldn't have my pre reqs done until June of 2013, then hope to get into med school in fall of 2013, graduate 2017, residency would finish 2020. I'll be practicing medicine as a PA, with 7 years of experience before I would be fully cut loose as a brand new doctor. I am looking to graduate with about 70,000 in debt. That will be paid off in the time I would have been graduating with around 200,000 in debt. At my age, the time line is just too short. If I was younger, the story would be different.

 

good luck

 

Thank you for the reply, Just Steve. The PA schools I've looked at so far do not allow you to skip any prerequisites or program classes. You make a good point about the long residency and debt, though.

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I do agree with Steve, if you are young you should go the MD route.

But then again......I am currently working on my PA pre-reqs and in my physics II class there is a PA who is 38 years old and is doing her pre-reqs for medical school!! In my Organic Chem class there is a 46 year old also working on his pre-reqs for Med school.

It all depends on your personal and financial situation. But yea I see that the pre-reqs for PA and Med school are getting closer and closer..... and the competition is just as thought!

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If you decide on med school, you still need to take at least a year of pre-reqs. You'll have to study and take the MCAT. Then 4 years of med school. Then look for and get accepted into a residency program (you don't just get into a residency)...at least a couple more years of that. Want to do surgery? Many years of 80+ hours weeks and minimal pay are in your future. If you want to go into something like ID you can look forward to a two year fellowship after residency.

 

PA will be a year a pre-reqs...probably not quite as much as for med school. You will also get your HCE during this time. Most schools will require the GRE (but not all) so you'll be taking that. PA school is basically one (hard) year of classes and one year of clinical rotations -- kind of like residencies for MD's. Graduate and you are done and in the work force.

 

Basically, I believe PA will take you 3-4 years at best. MD will take 7-9 years at best.

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Thank you for the reply, Just Steve. The PA schools I've looked at so far do not allow you to skip any prerequisites or program classes. You make a good point about the long residency and debt, though.

 

To clear up a point of clarification...UW doesn't allow individual students to skip any pre reqs. The school itself doesn't require those pre reqs. Instead, the school has a base requirement of 2 years of direct patient care. The average for the class I am in is just over 6 years.

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Tac another year, possibly 2 on to your med school schedule. What about the intern year? Med school graduates do a year serving as an intern prior to residency. Plus while many PA school applicants are permitted to having outstanding prereqs in progress ( i'm completing 2 right now and had a 3rd outstanding while submitting apps over the summer), med school applicants take the mcat which has a basis in their prereqs, so those must/should be completed first. Then giving you a full glide year of applying. But if you're young...

 

And i'm only aware of 2 schools that are 3 years in length and I wouldn't apply to those. My programs of choice are 24 or 27 months.

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I can only speak to PA school but the pre-req requirements vary from program to program. If someone is in the medical field already or has an undergrad in the Sciences then that pre-req list gets much shorter. However for me it was 1 yr pre-reqs since I was coming from a non-science/healthcare background.

 

Also most programs I am aware of are 24-27 months not 36. The 3 year programs I know of the didatic portion is part time over 2 years vs FT in 1 yr. But yes In total I would say that for me personally I had 3 total years 1 yt pre-req and then 2 yrs PA school. Med school would have been 1 yr pre-req followed by 4 yrs Med School followed by 3 yrs residency (Family, IM, Peds) more if other specialities So the shortest possible route to Dr for me would have been 8 yrs.

 

You will have to decide what is best for you. Good Luck

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Tac another year, possibly 2 on to your med school schedule. What about the intern year? Med school graduates do a year serving as an intern prior to residency.

 

There is no intern year before residency in the US (though some first year residents may be called interns).

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There is no intern year before residency in the US (though some first year residents may be called interns).

traditional DO residencies still include a rotating internship in many states making a DO residency 1 yr longer than an md residency in some specialties(EM for example). here is one:

http://www.einstein.edu/education/residencies/43-pi/osteopathic-rotating-internship.html

 

md's used to follow this model but it went by the wayside in the 70's. damn shame. every md/do should be able to function as a generalist even if they later decide to specialize. my father was among the last at his training institution required to do a generalist md internship before specializing in neurology.

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med students get the summer after ms 1 off and ms4 is as tough or easy as you want it to be. lots of folks take huge vacation and interviewing breaks that yr. one of my attendings spent 6 mo of his ms4 yr hiking in the himalayas as a "rural international medicine elective"(he stopped by a few clinics along his trek).

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