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you also need to have the skills and experience to merit getting a solo job with no on site backup. this is not a new grad type of situation. I was 5 years out of school and a prior paramedic before landing my first solo gig.

if you do a residency, that changes everything.....

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2 hours ago, Boatswain2PA said:

Find the areas of low population, and even lower physician density.  This will be places where most people don't want to live.  

Want to live in rural ozarks?  High plains?  Alaska?  Northern New England (not New York, but northern Maine)?  You can make a lot more because they can't get providers.

As of now I don't really have much of a preference of where I live. I'd prefer to keep as South as I can due to medical related issues, but I'm open minded to move wherever the money is once I get done with schooling. So I'd probably rule out Alaska and the Northeast, but I could deal with any rural area.

That's a great tip to keep tabs on the areas with low physician density. I'll have to start doing some more thorough research on that to pinpoint out some locales. Thanks for the response!

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1 hour ago, MCHAD said:

3rnet.org is a decent resource for jobs in rural areas. You list the states you're interested in when you create your profile and then potential employers in those states can contact you regarding openings.  You can also just search job postings  just like monster.com or healthecareers.com

most rural areas with good administrators understand the challenge of getting providers to the area and the pay is better from what I've seen.  I currently work in rural Idaho (just moving there after living away from my family in Utah 13 days a month) and make more than I would working in Boise or Idaho Falls.  

You also have to look at the states you're interested in to see if even though it's rural it's a very desireable place to live.  We are leaving Utah for lots of reasons, one of them being that even though a lot of Utah is rural, it's a state that a lot of people just want to live in so pay for PA's (and other professions) sucks because enough people want to be here they accept lower salaries to live where they want (I've actually seen job postings for PA/NP stating starting wage at $33/hour). 

Those are some great resources! I bookmarked both sites. I did not know that about Utah though. That's an absurdly low wage though. Is it a low-paying state for healthcare providers and physicians in general?

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1 hour ago, EMEDPA said:

you also need to have the skills and experience to merit getting a solo job with no on site backup. this is not a new grad type of situation. I was 5 years out of school and a prior paramedic before landing my first solo gig.

if you do a residency, that changes everything.....

I've considered doing a residency, but I'm not even entirely sure that I want to do EM just yet. I want to keep my options open, and I know that of the couple of specialties I'm interested in they don't all have a vast amount of residency opportunities. At this stage I'm most interested in EM or dermatology, and if I went derm then I probably wouldn't bother doing a residency as there's only the one in Wisconsin, and I'm not sure how beneficial it would even be versus learning OTJ. 

At this point I just want to gain as many resources as I can to assist in finding the best compensation straight out of school regardless of location. Although I also don't want to get myself into a situation where I'm in over my head because I want a SP that I can learn from and become a better healthcare provider under. So solo coverage isn't something I'm looking for straight out of school by any means. I'd be in way over my head haha.

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15 hours ago, Ollivander said:

As of now I don't really have much of a preference of where I live. I'd prefer to keep as South as I can due to medical related issues, but I'm open minded to move wherever the money is once I get done with schooling. So I'd probably rule out Alaska and the Northeast, but I could deal with any rural area.

That's a great tip to keep tabs on the areas with low physician density. I'll have to start doing some more thorough research on that to pinpoint out some locales. Thanks for the response!

Texas has vast swathes of under served rural areas that need a good PA. South..warm...no state income tax. Look around!

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