Best experience pre-pa?

[MarleneStar]

Hello! 
I am a pre-PA student. I have my bachelors degree in health sciences, I know that to get into PA school you need a lot of experience and shadowing hours and was wondering what the best experience pre-PA would be to have? I have been considering medical scribe, physical therapy assistant, and medical assistant and am just unsure what route to go before being able to apply to PA school with experience and if any is better than the other. Any advise is helpful, thank you so much! 

[EMEDPA]

Best: military medic, civilian medic, resp therapist, RN, LVN/LPN

OK: medical assistant, EMT-basic, CNA, P.T. asst

+/- : varies by program: medical scribe. some places take this and many do not. It is basically a mobile transcriptionist. 

[DiggySRNA]

if you can become an ED Tech try that. some hospitals will train you on the spot or some might req. a cna cert, emt license/ma cert.

then see if they allow the techs to do blood draws, iv placement, splinting, foley insertion etc. as an ED tech you'll be exposed to the multi-disciplinary team, shadowing opportunities, patient care; traumas, code/cardio-pulm arrest, stemi, etc. 

[SedRate]

18 hours ago, MarleneStar said:

I am a pre-PA student. I have my bachelors degree in health sciences, I know that to get into PA school you need a lot of experience and shadowing hours and was wondering what the best experience pre-PA would be to have?

The point of pre-PA experience is not to get into PA school. The point is essentially to utilize what skills you have already obtained from a first career and use them in a capacity as a PA as a second career. It wasn't until more recently (last 10-15 years) that the PA field has become a primary career and people have limited experiences going in. Some, such as myself, never actually worked in medicine before going to PA school. 

My first suggestion would be to shadow some PAs and talk to them to see if you still really want to become one. If possible, try to shadow an outpatient and inpatient PA. If you still want to be a PA, then get a job where you can work with patients and other medical staff and/or in a medical/science environment to get a feel for what it might be like and start developing your skills. 

Personally, my pre-PA experience was limited and consisted of research, shadowing, and volunteer work. Being a fly on the wall, helping people without any real responsibility, seeing a couple of surgeries, and being in a lab was interesting and helped me understand I like helping people and working in STEM but didn't prepare me well nor give me real skills to utilize as a PA other than great bedside manner (so I'm told). Looking back, I wish I would've actually worked in the medical field first to get a more comprehensive idea of what it was like.

Edited March 13 by SedRate

[68WEMTto65DPAC]

9 hours ago, EMEDPA said:

Best: military medic, civilian medic, resp therapist, RN, LVN/LPN

OK: medical assistant, EMT-basic, CNA, P.T. asst

+/- : varies by program: medical scribe. some places take this and many do not. It is basically a mobile transcriptionist. 

As a military medic and medical assistant, I can tell you that MAs nowadays have better patient care experience than military medics almost always. Unless the military medic is deployed or in a elite/special unit like ranges or special forces. But your average medic, in the Army at least, will not see nearly as many patients as your average medical assistant.

As a clinical medical assistant I work with PAs daily, get to see their thought process, get to interact with patients of all ages, get an understanding of how healthcare works (insurance, prior auths, scheduling, referrals, etc). I essentially do everything LPNs do minus working inpatient and doing IVs. Many, if not most, MA positions are strictly clinical nowadays, with PSRs taking over the majority of the administrative tasks.

Don’t get me wrong, I love being a medic and my military medical training has been great and will be very helpful in PA school. But military medics, both active duty and reserves, don’t spend the bulk of their time taking care of patients or being familiarized with the system they will go into as PAs (talking civilian system). They spend the bulk of their time training for their skills and doing military stuff.

Medical assistant, in my opinion, falls under the “best” category nowadays.

[EMEDPA]

My path was EMT basic to ER tech(where I got trained to do IM injections, venipuncture, IV starts, neb txs, ekgs, etc). In CA at the time(late 80s), EMTs who could draw blood and give IM injections could get a medical asst cert with a note from a physician, so I got that. I worked as an ER tech through college 24 hrs/week during the school yr and 60 hrs/week summers, then want to paramedic school right out of college. I worked as a paramedic for 5 years in Los angeles and philadelphia before becoming a PA. This was a pretty typical path to PA at the time. Most of my class were paramedics, RNs, and resp therapists. 

[Apollo1]

ER Tech is probably the best entry-level way to get PCE. You see the spectrum that medicine encompasses (primary care, surgery, neuro, cardiology, pulmonology, etc.) and learn to do some basic procedures. You're also around physicians/PAs, so there's opportunity to get more exposure to the practice of medicine.

[EMEDPA]

3 minutes ago, Apollo1 said:

ER Tech is probably the best entry-level way to get PCE. You see the spectrum that medicine encompasses (primary care, surgery, neuro, cardiology, pulmonology, etc.) and learn to do some basic procedures. You're also around physicians/PAs, so there's opportunity to get more exposure to the practice of medicine.

and to get great letters of recommendation. Mine was written by a doc who started a well-known PA program. 

[ohiovolffemtp]

Two of the limitations I see with military training is the (very appropriate for them) focus on trauma, primarily penetrating and explosion,  and the patient population: young, fit, healthy.   Neither of that really prepares you for the broad range of things you see in civilian medicine: most trauma is blunt force, and dealing with a variety of ages, unhealthy, co-morbid conditions, etc.  At one of my critical access hospitals we routinely hire EM docs and surgeons for PT work.  They love coming to the facility because they routinely get to see sick people and trauma that they don't see on base.  They tell me that the army actually encourages them to do this, because it keeps their skills up.

[EMEDPA]

On 3/16/2024 at 4:57 AM, ohiovolffemtp said:

Two of the limitations I see with military training is the (very appropriate for them) focus on trauma, primarily penetrating and explosion,  and the patient population: young, fit, healthy.   Neither of that really prepares you for the broad range of things you see in civilian medicine: most trauma is blunt force, and dealing with a variety of ages, unhealthy, co-morbid conditions, etc.  At one of my critical access hospitals we routinely hire EM docs and surgeons for PT work.  They love coming to the facility because they routinely get to see sick people and trauma that they don't see on base.  They tell me that the army actually encourages them to do this, because it keeps their skills up.

agree. Military medics are great at military stuff. I think civilian 911 medics are more well rounded because they take care of everything. 

[rev ronin]

On 3/13/2024 at 12:04 PM, Apollo1 said:

ER Tech is probably the best entry-level way to get PCE. You see the spectrum that medicine encompasses (primary care, surgery, neuro, cardiology, pulmonology, etc.) and learn to do some basic procedures. You're also around physicians/PAs, so there's opportunity to get more exposure to the practice of medicine.

Around here, ER techs are usually EMTs first. Sometimes you have to know someone to know when a position is open, but ER tech is a TON better experience than doing a metric ton of IFTs...

[MAstudent]

On 3/13/2024 at 8:03 AM, SedRate said:

The point of pre-PA experience is not to get into PA school. The point is essentially to utilize what skills you have already obtained from a first career and use them in a capacity as a PA as a second career. It wasn't until more recently (last 10-15 years) that the PA field has become a primary career and people have limited experiences going in. Some, such as myself, never actually worked in medicine before going to PA school. 

My first suggestion would be to shadow some PAs and talk to them to see if you still really want to become one. If possible, try to shadow an outpatient and inpatient PA. If you still want to be a PA, then get a job where you can work with patients and other medical staff and/or in a medical/science environment to get a feel for what it might be like and start developing your skills. 

Personally, my pre-PA experience was limited and consisted of research, shadowing, and volunteer work. Being a fly on the wall, helping people without any real responsibility, seeing a couple of surgeries, and being in a lab was interesting and helped me understand I like helping people and working in STEM but didn't prepare me well nor give me real skills to utilize as a PA other than great bedside manner (so I'm told). Looking back, I wish I would've actually worked in the medical field first to get a more comprehensive idea of what it was like.

I disagree because you won't get into PA school without Pre-PA experience.. hence the requirement for PCE hours. 

[SedRate]

4 hours ago, MAstudent said:

I disagree because you won't get into PA school without Pre-PA experience.. hence the requirement for PCE hours. 

That wasn't my point. 

[MAstudent]

On 3/29/2024 at 2:39 PM, MAstudent said:

The point of pre-PA experience is not to get into PA school

...