emedpa....I have a question for you!

[dr.day]

Hi,
I saw one of your replies and noticed that you are from the northwest and are an emed pa. I am trying to get into med school right now to go into emed, but if I don't get in, I would consider pa school. Do you like your job? What type of duties do you have? Do you get to do a lot of your own stuff or are you bossed around a lot? I am very curious and would love to hear more on this...any info you have would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks

P.S. Where in the NW? I've lived in Washington and Idaho
(Go Washington State Cougars!!!!!)

Pss.
I tried to email and im, but not able!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[DW]

its called a "private message"

 

[deleted6669]

I work in seattle. see the pa forum for more info about becoming a pa. lots of threads there about admissions, etc.you should not consider pa school as an alternative to an md program. if you don't get into med school you probably couldn't get into a pa program either. they are fairly competitive. the program I work for gets 300 applications for 30 spots every year. avg accepted applicant has 3.5 gpa and 4 years as rn, paramedic, or resp. therapist. the pa profession is designed to be a second medical career, not an entry level profession.
I work fairly independently. the docs I work with see about 5-10% of my patients and do chart review on 10% of the rest.
job satisfaction depends on who my supervisor is on any given day. some docs let me run codes/intubate/etc, others want to know about every case. I work with a group of 22 docs and probably 18 of them treat me as a colleague while 4 of them hate the idea of a pa in the group. I was associate chief of the group for 2 years and was involved with hiring and disciplining staff so that shows that most of them trust me enough to do oversight activities. the money is good but I work a lot more than the md staff. they work 14 8 hr shifts a month and I work 15-18 12 hr shifts.I want more control over my practice so I am in the process of applying to md/do programs.

 

[dr.day]

thank you for the info. sounds tough! I wish you luck!

 

[MDwillneverbe]

PA schools in the northeast (NYC area) are far less competitive than what emedPA describes-
Some may only require a 2.66 GPA
Check out NYIT, Hofstra,Touro College, LIU
But the job market is probably oversaturated

 

[deleted6669]

those are all lower tiier schools. check out duke, hahnemann, yale, emory,gw,rutgers,norteastern, stony brook. these are good east coast programs

 

[MDwillneverbe]

I was just making the point that like med schools-some PA schools are less competitive.
5 years ago what you said about GPA was correct - but I think all PA schools have lowered their standards as the applicant pool gets smaller.
Years ago there were a 1000 applicants for some programs- even lower tiered ones
Everybody takes the same NCCPA boards - and every practicing PA passes-
I was also pointing out that perhaps now is not a good time to become a PA since it is difficult to find good jobs
This post probably belongs on the prePA forum

 

[deleted6669]

most of the new pa job demand is on the east or west coast and very little in the middle of the country. the demand for pa's has switched from mostly primary care to specialties. if you want to work as a pa in any surgical subspecialty, especially ct or ortho, there are tons of jobs, even as a new grad.I get magazines full of pa job postings every day so I think that there is a job for every grad, but not always in the location or discipline wanted. if you want to work fp, im, peds, ob the market is getting tight. there is a decent market for EM pa's but not for new grads. most EM positions now are for experienced folks. the number of programs has increased from 52 to 134 in the last decade. there are good and bad programs and some are easier to get into then others. I think high end programs like duke are still as hard to get into as they were 10 years ago. most of the newer programs have lower standards in order to obtain a market share. and yes, this should be on the pa forum.