JDUB44 said:
Look, just answer the question. Its not hard to figure out that PA school is for people who A) Don't want to invest the time to become a doctor, and would still like to practice medicine. or B) Can't get into medical school. My girl is A, but who knows she might have been a B too. She has shadowed PA's and knows about the job, just doesn't know about the schooling. Sorry if there was confusion in my post, but dont come off actin so high and mighty, You were probably a B anyways in which case you will live a life of regret.
If you know so much about it, then why are you asking??
Often it's the case that people who can't get into medical school, can't get into PA school either.
It's very easy to fail out of PA school (I assume it's universal...I have 14 rotational exams, for 14 months of rotations, I get a 76 on one exam, I am on probation, I get a 76 (or less) on two exams, and I am asked to leave school.
As said above, if you don't WANT to be a PA, you should become an MD/DO or try something else, it's a tough role to be expected to practice medicine with about the same proficiency as an MD, and yet have your profession be repeatedly bashed by Physicians, and by Patients who had bad clinical outcomes and blame it on the fact that it was a PA that cared for them (when the same outcome would have occured with a physician)
If you have an ego complex, don't apply to PA school. If people love you, you have good repoire with people in a provider role (regardless of your title) and you are always open to scratch your head and ask yourself "why" when some disease process doesn't make sense to you, then become a PA....
IF you want to have all the pathophys and biochem you could ever want drilled into you, become a physician. It's true that PA's often just don't know how certain disease processes and meds work down to the enzymatic rxns, then again there are a lot of physicians who don't know that either, but if knowing that is a NEED....go to medical school, you might not get very much of the super nitty gritty in PA school.
I will say, that getting into PA school, is now a mix of your grades, your LOR's (yes, you need three LOR's) and how you rub the admissions comitee, there aren't very many PA's..... we are still a small club (I guess I can't say WE for another year) but, program directors and faculty want only to admit students who will represent the program and fill the PA "mission" outstandingly.
If adcoms read "just wanted to shortcut my way to practicing medicine....... " they won't want you at their program.
