neurosurgery

[toco]

hello everyone,

i was online trying to find out some information on neurosurgical pa's. i could not find all that much other than from the aaspa. what types of procedures are they responsible for? i'm assuming they act as first assistant but what exactly do they do, both in the OR and out? what is their pay like? how in demand are they? any help would be greatly appreciated.



thank you,

toco

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[deleted6669]

I can tell you about the 1 contact I have with a pa in neurosurgery. a classmate of mine went through the surgical residency at norwalk/yale and did neurosurgery as his 1st job for about a yr(he does orthosurg now). the impression he gave me was that all the pa's in the practice were surgical residency grads. he made about 110k that year because they paid him nice on-call fees, 1st assistant fees, and er procedure fees. he had to take 1st call to the er for neurosurg cases and decided which pts were surgical candidates and which weren't. the scope of practice was good and he did many advanced procedures in and out of the o.r.
he liked the job, but left because of a personality conflict with 1 of the partners.
i think there is a link to the pa surgical group at aapa.org.

 

[toco]

thank you for your help emedpa, it was very useful.

 

[crawgator]

Toco,

I'm not a practicing PA yet, but my sister-in-law just died from a malignant brain tumor-- Glioblastoma Multiforme which is a grade 4 malignant brain tumor located in her temporal lobe. She was only 35 y/o and married only 5 weeks. I personally dealt with not only the MD but his PA as well; she expired in 5 weeks. As you might guess, in my humble opinion, Neurosurgery, especially the strides made concerning the effective treatment of brain tumors is really cutting edge technology. If you should decide to go into such a field, as I am now, the success rate barring CVA's/Dementia, and other neurological dx's is very slim. The case studies/medication protocols including Temodar and other immunosuppressive therapy is still just that, experimental. If you do decide to folow this path, I hope you truly have researched this path, knowing that the outcomes of pt survival is very slim, if a handful of yrs. Toco, what school are you accepted to? Another point, the Neurosurgical PA that I was in contact with worked very long hrs along with alot of autonomy; that is the trade off if you know what I mean.

 

[toco]

crawgator,


i am very sorry for your loss. i' ve not yet been accepted into any programs, i still need some prerequisite work. i am currently researching all of the specialties so that i have a bit of an edge when it comes to making my future decision. neurosurgery is a field that i believe, as you said, is still quite experimental. this is one of the reasons i am so intigued. i believe with enough work, treatments will become more predictable and effective and patient survival statistics will greatly improve. best of luck to you in your future endeavors.


toco

 

[JPNSU]

This really doesn't make sense to me. The few people that I know that are currently in PA school or practicing PA-Cs went into this profession because they did not want to work the long hours that a physician MD/DO would have to. I have no doubt that neurosurgical PAs exist but what's the point? On the other hand, if I was a neurosurgeon I wouldn't mind having a PA going in at 3am instead of me to evaluate a patient. Then again, there are liability issues at play...

Jason Park MS-IV
NSU-COM

 

[deleted6669]

the point is that if you want to be involved in neurosurgery with 2-3 yrs training instead of >9 and still make > 100k/yr you can. most pa's that I know work more hours than the docs they work with, so I don't think that is a big issue. some people go in to the pa profession as a "lifestyle choice" but the vast majority just want to move up a step from paramedic, resp. therapist, or nurse to a position of more responsibility and clinical interest.

 

[crawgator]

Very well said. Thanks for driving the point home