Hi!!!
I am an Italian MD, who short-tracked as well.
Yes, here we usually go into med school straight after high school, and it lasts 6 years. That said, in my med school (which, btw, seems to be no 2 top in the country) they allow people who already graduated from fields like pharm, biology, biotechnology (me!!!) and so on to skip 1st year. They also give you credits for 2nd, 3rd and 4th year courses (this extensively varies upon your previous transcript), thus making our med school, which is incredibly hard, a little softer for us previous grads.
For example, I got credits for chemistry, biology, molecular biology, biophysics, biochemistry, biostathistics, microbiology, introductory pharm, some pharm, some path, laboratory med. Even if I was basically given most of the credits for the 2nd year as well, they didn't allow me to start directly from 3rd year, as I asked them to.
Anyway, I don't know how long is the PA training in the US and which subjects you go through in details, as we don't have neither PAs nor NPs here in Italy. Here it's very simple: either you become a doctor, or you go into nursing (3 yrs course after high school, easy easy course to get in and to graduate in), with really really big difference in salary later on, and lifestyle too.
The good thing of Ita med schools, at least of mine, is that for non-EU people the admission process is ridiculously easy compared to the nightmare us EU applicants have to go through. Basically in my school each year there are 200 something spots (mine is a very big city with just 2 med schools) for EU people, with an average of 3000 something applicants. There is an entrance exam in the first week of sep and those who score higher are in, very simple.
For non EU people, though, there are 5-10ish reserved spots, and usually the applicants are less than the spots, so you can score even 0 in the exam and, if you are non-EU, you will get in. This is good for you, and I guess nice of our government to give an easier way for non EU people to get in, but somehow sad for the ones between us who want to do the opposite, for example, pursuing residency in the US, and they are not even taken into consideration because they are IMGs. Anyway, in Italy we are kind people and we don't really care where you come from, as long as you do good
The other good thing about our med schools is that almost all of them (with a couple of exceptions) are public, so the highest fee for tuition is ranging around 1500-2000 euros a year; the tuition fee depends on your income, and if it's lower than a certain cutoff you won't pay anything at all.
The only downpoint for a non-EU student is that all our courses are in italian, so you have to learn italian. If you already know the language, it's gonna be a great choice for you to come here.
Feel free to ask whatever else you wish, I am happy to help.
(I guess they should hire me to advertise our med school, eheheheh
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