Physician Assistant

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UnitedWay211

UnitedWay211

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I am a pre-med student with a Masters degree in Chemistry. My state does not use PAs as much as NPs, so I have never interacted with any of them until now. I have a new physician, and she just hired a PA. The PA has pamphlets in the waiting room explaining who she is and what PAs do. I was curious to know if PAs also attend medical school, but only for a shorter time? I ask this because her pamphlet states the following information:

"I graduated from the University of Utah medical school in 2002 with a Master's of Physician Assistant studies.

"Physician Assistants like myself attend the same medical schools as doctors, but generally start with at least 8 years of work experience in medicine, as well as an undergraduate degree."

Again, please excuse me, as I am not familiar with PAs. I have never even seen a PA at my volunteer site. If they were around, I would know because every worker is identified.

Thanks

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UnitedWay211 said:
I am a pre-med student with a Masters degree in Chemistry. My state does not use PAs as much as NPs, so I have never interacted with any of them until now. I have a new physician, and she just hired a PA. The PA has pamphlets in the waiting room explaining who she is and what PAs do. I was curious to know if PAs also attend medical school, but only for a shorter time? I ask this because her pamphlet states the following information:

"I graduated from the University of Utah medical school in 2002 with a Master's of Physician Assistant studies.

"Physician Assistants like myself attend the same medical schools as doctors, but generally start with at least 8 years of work experience in medicine, as well as an undergraduate degree."

Again, please excuse me, as I am not familiar with PAs. I have never even seen a PA at my volunteer site. If they were around, I would know because every worker is identified.

Thanks
Click to expand...

PAs do not "attend medical school" per se, but there are many PA programs that are housed at medical schools. Others are associated with colleges and universities. At the PA programs that are housed at medical schools, they may put both sets of students in some classes together. It is true that it takes less time to become a PA. Most programs are 2-3 years long with 1-2 years of didactic training and 1 year of clinical rotations. For more information visit aapa.org or physicianassistantforum.com.
 
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UnitedWay211 said:
I am a pre-med student with a Masters degree in Chemistry. My state does not use PAs as much as NPs, so I have never interacted with any of them until now. I have a new physician, and she just hired a PA. The PA has pamphlets in the waiting room explaining who she is and what PAs do. I was curious to know if PAs also attend medical school, but only for a shorter time? I ask this because her pamphlet states the following information:

"I graduated from the University of Utah medical school in 2002 with a Master's of Physician Assistant studies.

"Physician Assistants like myself attend the same medical schools as doctors, but generally start with at least 8 years of work experience in medicine, as well as an undergraduate degree."

Again, please excuse me, as I am not familiar with PAs. I have never even seen a PA at my volunteer site. If they were around, I would know because every worker is identified.

Thanks
Click to expand...

hmm...I think this pamphlet is a little misleading. I did not attend the same medical school as a doctor, nor was my PA program even associated with a medical school. The 8 years of work experience in medicine is rare to find now a days. So, "generally" should be changed to "rarely". The AAPA posts a report of new PA students, which includes average HCE, but I can't get it to load.

To answer all your questions about the PA profession you should visit:

www.aapa.org
www.physicianassistantforum.com
 
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Today, the x amount of medical experience before going to PA school is much less than years ago (much to many PAs chagrin). Within the last few years, a strong movement has seen may college grads go straight into PA school (like myself). I knew from HS I didn't want to be a doctor. I did a B.S. in Pre-Med, got lots of experience shadowing and such in undergrad, and then took a year off after to get a job (as an OR tech). I'll be attending school at Stony Brook (which does happen to be a med school as well) in July. We do not however take classes with med school students, which I actually prefer. Depends on the school the interaction with md or do students. Unfortunately, a lot of new PAs are people who couldn't get into med school, and decided PA school was next best. Not saying one can't be happy or certainly a good practitioner doing this, but I feel if you want to be a doctor, be a doctor. The lack of autonomy or salary as a PA (not always the case either) will become disgruntling and they will go the ineffective way of becoming a doc anyways.
 
Thank you everyone for your helpful replies. Now that I have read your responses, it sounds like the pamphlet is a little misleading. I will definitely check out the PA forum.
 
as noted above some pa programs are at medical schools and share faculty with the medschools and may overlap in coursework/classes.
I attended a pa program at a medical school and had 10 yrs prior health care experience and a prior bs before I became a pa.
the pamphlet might be true for that particular individual but not for all pa's..
 
Why in the heck would anyone in their right mind use red font....
 
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Well as it turns out, her brochure was misleading. The University of Utah has many other programs in the dept of medicine, including the physician assistant program. If she thinks she has attended medical school, than many many students have gone to medical school and came out with degrees in neurobiology and anatomy, medical bioinformatics, biochemistry, human genetics, audiology (I think they are also affiliated with them.), etc. It is okay for her to state that her physician assistant program is affiliated with their medical school, just like these other programs are. But, it is NOT medical school.

So, when any student gets one of those degrees and later attends and completes their MD program, they went to med school twice (insert sarcasm). :rolleyes:

After some time, there have been many complaints about her, and thankfully I have not and will not be seeing her.
 
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if it is part of the medical school it would not be misleading for her cv to say this:

MS PA Studies
University of Utah School of Medicine

or for her to say: "I did my PA training at the University of Utah School of medicine".

obviously if all she says is " I am at graduate of the u. of utah school of medicine" it would be misleading.



anyway, dude, 2 month old thread...why not let it die....
 
emedpa said:
if it is part of the medical school it would not be misleading for her cv to say this:

MS PA Studies
University of Utah School of Medicine

or for her to say: "I did my PA training at the University of Utah School of medicine".

obviously if all she says is " I am at graduate of the u. of utah school of medicine" it would be misleading.



anyway, dude, 2 month old thread...why not let it die....
Click to expand...

She said that she attended the "same medical schools that doctors do." I read that on her brochure. That is misleading.

I am just glad that I did not have to see her. Many people are having problems with her, including her SPs.

I am female, not male.
 
UnitedWay211 said:
She said that she attended the "same medical schools that doctors do." I read that on her brochure. That is misleading.

I am just glad that I did not have to see her. Many people are having problems with her, including her SPs.

I am female, not male.
Click to expand...

If you are in a program that is in a school of medicine then you do go to the same school as the medical students. You are in a separate program but the same school. This really isn't misleading. It would be misleading if she said something to the effect that she completed the same coursework as physicians thereby implying she is practicing at the same level as physicians.
 
UnitedWay211 said:
and you would know her relationship with her sp how?
if you don't like the practice I suggest you get medical care elsewhere. chances are if you keep going there you will have to see the pa (who you have already prejudged without ever meeting) when her sp is overbooked or on vacation or away at a conference, etc.
for all you know she could be the best pa ever and the smartest person in the practice....
seeing as you no medical training of any kind you really are not in a place to judge a medical professional with a min of 6 yrs of higher education...and U. of utah is one of the top 5 pa programs in the country(out of 150) so it's likely her undergrad gpa and experience were stellar....like 3.8+ here are their stats from last yr:

How many people apply, and how many get in?
The application process is very competitive. For the 2010 entering class, there were 779 applications and 91 candidates were interviewed for 40 available seats. ( that's a 5% admit rate).
here, do some research so you stop sounding out of your depth:
http://medicine.utah.edu/upap/
interesting that you claim to be premed yet 100% of your posts here at sdn are to bash pa's. in 3 months as a member you had nothing else to talk about beside how you distrust pa's.
I'll go ahead and say it if no one else will:
YOU ARE A TROLL. GO AWAY.
Click to expand...
 
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delete. forget it, not worth it.
 
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delete. no more feeding the troll.
 
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delete. no more feeding the trolls
 
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I don't understand how you could find the statement as you quoted as being misleading. It clearly states that she has a MS degree and what kind of education and experiences many PAs have. You have a masters degree, what if you got in clinical chemistry at the xyz university school of medicine? You would still have gone to the same school as the medical students though it is obvious that you are not a physician. I think you understood perfectly well what this means and you are being ridiculous about it.
 
she is a troll only here to bash pa's
I have already asked the mods to close this thread and ban her.
this will be my last post on this thread.
I should have taken my own advice and not fed a troll.
 
emedpa said:
she is a troll only here to bash pa's
I have already asked the mods to close this thread and ban her.
this will be my last post on this thread.
I should have taken my own advice and not fed a troll.
Click to expand...

lol
 
ugh, delete.
 
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The thing that bothers me about this pamphlet is that it sounds desperate. It's like the PA has to write the material to make up for something she is lacking. I never realized how much our profession envies for the prestige of being a physician until becoming a student and from perusing the threads in this forum. I hope it's just a small subsegment of the PA community that is like this and not the majority because it's pretty sad.

I have shadowed extremely competent and humble PAs. One of the things that made them great was that they never tried to justify the profession, rather they did what they did and they did it well. It gets tiring hearing some classmates as well as forum members assert or defend the competitiveness of PA admissions relative to med school, or how we're "just like" physicians, or like this pamphlet, having point out the 8 years experience (which is erroneous) to make up for the fact that she's a PA.
 
yup, 8 yrs is certainly higher than avg.
I think last yr the avg was down to 2000 hrs due to the programs that will accept folks with low hrs(or no hrs).
there are still programs that avg 8000 hrs avg/class( U.WA for example) but they are becoming more rare.
10 yrs ago the avg was much higher but probably not 8 yrs. probably more like 5. in my class most folks had > 5 yrs with a few with 2 yrs or so(range 2-20 yrs). I don't think anyone had less than 4000 hrs.
avg age in my class was around 35. I think the avg now is down to around 24 with the huge influx of new grads and younger folks with minimal experience.
 
MedLurker said:
The thing that bothers me about this pamphlet is that it sounds desperate.
Click to expand...

In case you're not understanding ... there was no such pamphlet. This thread has been trolled by a medical student who has self-esteem issues. Let's move on.
 
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