Are all patient care jobs like this?!

[technocrat626]

I'm a part-time undergrad student who has been bouncing back and forth between pursuing a healthcare career and pursuing a law/economics public service type career. In the process of trying to finally come to a decision, I decided to shadow a physician. He worked at a VA hospital. His residency had been in family med, but he was doing emergency medicine. I shadowed him for a total of about 20 hours, and his job seemed absolutely miserable. He spent more time sitting in an office shuffling paperwork than he spent seeing patients. It was simply one of the most mind-numbingly boring experiences of my life, and if I spent my life doing it, I'd cut my wrists before I hit 50.

 

So my question is this: are all patient care jobs like this? One of the career paths I've been considering is to be a primary care physician assistant and work in a VERY rural area. Seriously, the ideal job site for me would be one only accessible via off-road vehicle or horse. I want to treat patients who, without me and my supervising physician, wouldn't have access to. In fact, I've often fantasized about going off into the Andes mountains and treating the indigenous tribes out there! That would be perfect. :-D

 

Sorry, I kind of went off on a tangent there. So yeah...if this is the type of career I want, is that achievable? And if I do achieve it, am I still going to spend more time doing paperwork than actually treating patients?

[sartort]

I never worked for the VA, but I did work as a medic in the army and my guess is this physician does a lot of administrative duties while several PAs do most patient care. That's what it was like in my brigade. 6 PAs saw patients (1 battalion each) and 1 MD saw patients only with more complex cases and did a lot of admin work. In that setting the PAs were with patients probably about 60-75% of the time (or discussing a care plan with medics or other providers) and doing notes the remainder of the time.

 

When I volunteered at a free med clinic most of the doctors did patient care about 95% of the time and filled out notes mostly while in the room with the patient.

 

The paperwork aspect of healthcare isn't a common favorite, but it is absolutely necessary.

[KCMA79]

A lot of a PAs time is spent on admin. Charting, lab review, follow up on lab, QA reviews and phone calls are all part of the job. It's not all about stamping out disease, misery and pestilence.

[greenmood]

The answer is no, not all patient care jobs are like that. I would hazard to say that most ED physicians don't spend their days in that manner unless they have some portion of their position devoted to administration.

 

Everyone has to chart, everyone has to take phone calls, talk to families, deal with insurance companies blah blah blah. But unless you want to be involved in admin stuff it won't take your entire day. Or (for the one person who is going to argue with me for the sake of it) it doesn't have to take the whole day.

 

Honestly, I think you must know this, right? Your dream job in the Andes would likely involve little paperwork. But in rural America with just you and your SP, who else do you think is going to handle it?

[technocrat626]

Re-reading this, it seems as though I didn't frame my question properly. My issue wasn't so much with the paperwork aspect, as much as the sheer amount of idle time. This physician was maddeningly idle. He spent more time twiddling his thumbs than doing anything else. That's what I don't want to do. I'm ok with as much as a 50/50 split, spending half of my time on patient care and half of it on paperwork. I just don't want to sit in my office doing absolutely nothing for hours at a time. Perhaps it was just a VA thing. I know their ER isn't exactly a busy place. I just got really worried when I shadowed this guy, because I definitely couldn't do what he does.

[Timon]

Do some more shadowing with different PAs or even physicians at different specialties / patient based / populations. I shadowed in a trauma center and it was feast or famine, a family practice (was moderately busy), ER Fast Track (non stop busy), orthopedic (moderately busy), etc. Each one served a different population so it helped me get a complete and realistic view of what I would be doing.