AustinR Posted January 2, 2020 Share Posted January 2, 2020 Good afternoon y'all and Happy New Year! My name is Austin and I am a firefighter/paramedic in Texas. I have always been interested in healthcare and helping people, so I thought a good start would be to acquire my EMT certification, and immediately became hooked. So I got hired on with a fire department and obtained my paramedic certification. But I want to continue to expand in the medical field and emergency medicine. I have about 3 years in EMS experience. The only real college experience I have is with my EMT, pre-requisite A&P, and Paramedic. So I know I am probably not off to a good start there and might be getting ahead of myself. But I am very eager to begin on the path to accomplish becoming a PA. So my question is, what exactly are the pre-requisites to becoming a PA? This portion of education and schooling, I am not familiar with at all. I don't really know where to begin. So any help would be greatly appreciated and I would love to talk with you about any advice and guidance you can offer! Thank you again and I hope you all have a fantastic 2020! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClevelandJ Posted January 2, 2020 Share Posted January 2, 2020 Hello, I am a pre-pa student and have been where you are now. First you can start by researching programs you may be interested in to narrow down your field because the requirememts will all vary by program but here is a few things to get you started. Most programs expect a fair amount of PCE or HCE, volunteering, shadowing a PA, letters of recommendation, personal statement and required prerequisites. Most common perequisites include one year of biology, chemistry, and a&p, one semester of microbiology, organic chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, statistics and college algebra to name a few. This can be a very time consuming endeavor so I would start by shadowing a PA first to be certain this is what you really want to do. Best of luck to you and get to searching. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AustinR Posted January 2, 2020 Author Share Posted January 2, 2020 11 minutes ago, ClevelandJ said: Hello, I am a pre-pa student and have been where you are now. First you can start by researching programs you may be interested in to narrow down your field because the requirememts will all vary by program but here is a few things to get you started. Most programs expect a fair amount of PCE or HCE, volunteering, shadowing a PA, letters of recommendation, personal statement and required prerequisites. Most common perequisites include one year of biology, chemistry, and a&p, one semester of microbiology, organic chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, statistics and college algebra to name a few. This can be a very time consuming endeavor so I would start by shadowing a PA first to be certain this is what you really want to do. Best of luck to you and get to searching. I really do appreciate it ClevelandJ! Thank you for all the information. I'll look into shadowing a PA very soon, though I'm about 1,000% sure this is what I want to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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