Brand New in Need of Some Guidance

[Renalynette]

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Hello,

I am a post bacc student at Hunter College in my second semester. My grades are very average and I am at a point where I don't know if I should continue on pre-med or think about a PA program. I am 29 and I do hope to get married and have children within the next three years.

My passion is to work in Oncology, but I do not know what roles PA's play -

Finally, How can i find a mentor? When and where do I look into volunteering ( How does emt look vs. working in a hospital)?

Thanks so much for your feedback!

 

[sunny1]

Hi, I don't know enough about your background to help you think about one path vs. the other. However, I do believe that some PA programs like Duke (but by no means all programs) require a minimum number of hours of clinical exposure in order to be accepted to their program...though you could meet this through the EMT or volunteering that you mentioned.

I work in a pediatric hematology/oncology clinic and we have a team of physicians with NPs. Our NPs sub-specialize to a certain extent, some are more interested in long-term survival and late effects of treatment and others specialize more with brain tumor patients or our sickle cell kids for example. There are 5 MDs and 4 NPs in our department and they typically work as a partnered team, so one MD/NP pair is a team. I can't speak to adult oncology, but our group does use NPs and I know they enjoy their job! Also, one of them works part-time. Obviously you're asking about PAs, but I don't see why a PA couldn't operate in the same fashion. Perhaps you could meet with one of your local PA programs if there is one and discuss your options and what sort of options there are for PAs in the fields you're interested in?