Hospitalist PA vs Clinic PA

[Lemon Bars]

I'd like to know what it's like working as a hospitalist PA vs. working as a PA in a clinic or urgent care setting. Which is more fast paced? How much multi-tasking is required? Is it more or less stressful dealing with inpatients vs. outpatients?

 

Thanks for an insight into this!

[winterallsummer]

Really depends on where you work, but in general a clinical PA in urgent care is somewhere in between family med and ED (fairly fast paced, some people use you as their primary care provider but in theory they shouldn't, deal with lots of infections etc). hospitalist would more mimic internal med (all your patients are admitted to a hospital). I would think hospitalist is more stressful, may be slower paced, but there is so much more to know and deal with.

[UGoLong]

I spend about half of my time in clinic and half in the hospital. The volume of people to be seen and the need to get from one place to the other makes this very fast-paced. I may go to three hospitals in the AM and need to be at clinic when my first patient shows up. I can spend the time I need with each to a point; if the patients start to back up, they get unhappy (you would too).