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5 hours ago, Cideous said:

Rev has I think?

Yep.  What do you need to know?  It's a safe, clean, needed, reasonably well compensated field with no call and no nights.  It also happens to be somewhat repetitive and boring, but that's because obstructive sleep apnea is EVERYWHERE.

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10 hours ago, dsta said:

Basically just curious what the the biggest challenges were from your experience.  I don't have experience in sleep medicine, so would be interested in hearing what it was like for you starting off and what the learning curve was like. 

So, I worked in primary care first, and learned the basics of sleep apnea testing and treatment there. That's the bread and butter of sleep medicine.  Some of the weird stuff is fun, like nacrolepsy, some is baffling, like nightly enuresis in a 20's year old male, and some of it is frustrating, like insomnia.  You can give people sleep hygiene education and handouts, but getting them to do anything meaningful off of it is like pulling teeth.  It's WAY harder to get someone off their Ambien than it is to convince someone to try CPAP.

Learning curve isn't too bad.  AASM has a series of NP/PA-focused CME that was reasonable in price.  I did the Clinical Sleep Educator curriculum from BRPGST, but they did away with that shortly afterwards--they've got a different/replacement credential, but both organizations have stuff you can do to both 1) get yourself up to speed, and 2) show off as merit badges for credentialing.

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Thanks for the response. I'm going to shadow the department head who will also be my SP and the one training me, so that should give me a pretty good idea of what it will be like. It's an area of medicine I'm really interested in, so I'm hopeful it will be a good fit. 

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  • 2 years later...
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4 hours ago, VodliyFort said:

Hey, Rev. I’m really grateful for your reply. It’s really useful for me. Have you been working for a long time there? Cause, you know, I’m about to gain new knowledge and experience, so I’m really curious about this. Do you know any sources or articles to read on the topic?

There's a kill-large-insects-with-this-volume-since-phonebooks-are-now-extinct reference book on the topic by Kryger, Roth, and Dement. ISBN 978-0323242882 for the current edition, but it's a significant investment and they're probably going to be coming out with a new edition since that one is from 2016.

Other than that, the AASM CME is a pretty good investment.

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On 7/27/2022 at 7:50 AM, rev ronin said:

There's a kill-large-insects-with-this-volume-since-phonebooks-are-now-extinct reference book on the topic by Kryger, Roth, and Dement. ISBN 978-0323242882 for the current edition, but it's a significant investment and they're probably going to be coming out with a new edition since that one is from 2016.

Other than that, the AASM CME is a pretty good investment.

What potential jobs before PA school do you think would benefit you/give you a good idea of what to expect as a PA in sleep medicine? Do you think working as an EEG Technician would give you a realistic idea or not really?

What would you say would be an entry level salary for a PA coming out of school looking for this to be their first job? Thanks Rev!

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4 minutes ago, NeuroNate24 said:

What potential jobs before PA school do you think would benefit you/give you a good idea of what to expect as a PA in sleep medicine? Do you think working as an EEG Technician would give you a realistic idea or not really?

What would you say would be an entry level salary for a PA coming out of school looking for this to be their first job? Thanks Rev!

I don't know what entry level wages are in this specialty now.  I was doing $60/hr W-2 without benefits in 2017. I suspect it would be $80+/hr now.

Being a sleep tech would work if you wanted into the field, but I hate being up all night, so I moved from EMT->Family Med PA->Sleep Med PA. If you really want to do sleep, becoming a polysomnographer is going to be great pre-pa experience plus relatively decent paying, I believe, but I don't know anyone who's gone that route.

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1 hour ago, SedRate said:

May I ask why no benefits as a W2 in 2017? Is your suspected $80/h pay rate nowadays with or without benefits? 

It was part time in a startup--that would have been $120k annualized, which was about as much as I was offered in Occ Med with full benefits at the time. I also had 5y family med experience at the time.  I didn't ask for FT or benefits, because 2017-2021, I was always working two part time jobs without benefits as an effort to NOT get under any one organization's thumb.

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Sleep med makes me want to sleep.. it’s honestly not a competitive specialty, except that a lot of times you might also have to do pulm or neuro with it depending on primary specialty of your SP. We manage a ton of insomnia in psych as sleep clinics around here won’t treat it unless it’s OSA 

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8 hours ago, iconic said:

Sleep med makes me want to sleep.. it’s honestly not a competitive specialty, except that a lot of times you might also have to do pulm or neuro with it depending on primary specialty of your SP. We manage a ton of insomnia in psych as sleep clinics around here won’t treat it unless it’s OSA 

"The Sleep Medicine Certification Program is jointly developed by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM), the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP), the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN), the American Board of Otolaryngology (ABOto) and the American Board of Anesthesiology (ABA). The examination is administered to candidates from all Boards at the same time in the same testing centers. ABIM is responsible for administering the examination." (https://www.abim.org/certification/policies/internal-medicine-subspecialty-policies/sleep-medicine.aspx)

So, Internists, Pediatricians, Family med docs, Psychiatrists, Neurologists, ENTs, and Anesthesiologists can all earn specialist certification in sleep med. Pulm and Neuro probably do the most generalist sleep stuff, but really, any of them can do it. Anesthesiologists who get sick of putting people under can work in pain management and likely make a ton more money.

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How often do you see PA's in neuro Ron? I love neuroscience and learning about sleep disorders so I think Neuro-sleep medicine would be the best crossover/fit for me. However, I have noticed that neurology in practice is very different from theoretical neuroscience. I remember a physician referring to it as "internal medicine for the brain". Not very interesting cases but what's your take on it?

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  • 2 months later...
On 2/3/2023 at 5:21 PM, rev ronin said:

I don't know what entry level wages are in this specialty now.  I was doing $60/hr W-2 without benefits in 2017. I suspect it would be $80+/hr now.

Being a sleep tech would work if you wanted into the field, but I hate being up all night, so I moved from EMT->Family Med PA->Sleep Med PA. If you really want to do sleep, becoming a polysomnographer is going to be great pre-pa experience plus relatively decent paying, I believe, but I don't know anyone who's gone that route.

Im waiting to hear back from a couple of PA programs. Assuming worse case scenario I don't get in (35 now) I'm not going to apply again since I gotta get my life on track, make good money, meet someone and finally enjoy my life. If I was to go into Polysomnographer vs EEG technician would both of those be only night shifts? Also, how long would it take to make 100k in either of those fields as just a technician or a technologist in your experience? 

Thanks

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3 minutes ago, NeuroNate24 said:

Im waiting to hear back from a couple of PA programs. Assuming worse case scenario I don't get in (35 now) I'm not going to apply again since I gotta get my life on track, make good money, meet someone and finally enjoy my life. If I was to go into Polysomnographer vs EEG technician would both of those be only night shifts? Also, how long would it take to make 100k in either of those fields as just a technician or a technologist in your experience? 

Thanks

Yes it's nights only, always, all the time, until you transition into some other job with that as a background--the RPSGTs who ran the clinic I worked at knew more sleep medicine than me.  I couldn't begin to guess on wages, however.

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8 minutes ago, rev ronin said:

Yes it's nights only, always, all the time, until you transition into some other job with that as a background--the RPSGTs who ran the clinic I worked at knew more sleep medicine than me.  I couldn't begin to guess on wages, however.

Ah, I see. Yeah I definitely wouldn't like the hours then unless the pay was fantastic. Yeah, life has become pretty depressing and deflating without money not to mention student loans. At this age, I thought I'd already be done with medical school and almost residency and come out making north of 250k in neurology. Hah. Plans didn't go as I planned at all. Trying to figure out worst-case scenario. If i make only 70k starting no way I'm staying in California which means I'd leave all my family here and build my life somewhere else. Even 100k isn't enough for me in California. 

Thanks for your fast response 

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