The thing about comparing any other career besides PA to that of physician, is the whole apples/oranges cliche, each career, (nursing, pharm, pt, emt-p) is thought things a physician isn't.....plain and simple,
But, a PA education on the other hand is all the most practical and applicable stuff one might learn in medical school. Without all the intrinsics, a PA learns medicine at the minimalist level. what to look for, how to fix it. I am sure it takes a PA lots of years of on the job learning to know pathophysiology similar to what a med student gets force fed during med school and studying for step one. The great thing about the PA model, is the really detailed info one learns in medical school is only usefull occassionally, 90% of medicine is pretty typical, seen it 1,000 times, sort of thing, it's that 10% where the importance of having the more extensive physician education comes into play. I am sure there are many physicians, who spend their whole career and never come across a case that a PA couldn't handle as informed and as effectively as a physician, but just in case something abstract, unique, and oddly presenting shows up, a good medical education is needed to trouble shoot; to use the basics to piece together a diagnosis and a plan, that knowledge a PA won't have learned in school, and unless they are geeky and read physiology and pathophys books on their time off, they probably won't have learned it on the job either. Thats the separation of PA vs. MD, that and a PA didn't have to hustle and be the b!tch for an intern year unless they chose to....
Funny thing about the argument, and physicians continually yelling about how PA's can't possibly know as much as a themselves, and how unless they go to medical school won't ever be anything but a mere assistant, these physicians on SDN are probably insecure, because in reality you can take anybody and have them read medical text and learn this stuff, (well, anybody with normal intelligence) A PA falls into this category too (along with the 165IQ science types creating all the great medical technology that most dr.s probably don't know how it works) and the unlike random people reading the book, and learning the stuff, a PA gets to see it and diagnose it too.
At the rate of travel at which the PA profession is currently at, in the next 8-10 years, it's going to be a whole different thing to be a PA, it won't be the unknown career, and more an more PA's will be in partnership with physicians (obviously a 49% ownership partnership)
By nature, a PA in most states has the ability to have the exact same scope of practice as their physician supervisor (sans being the man with the knife) so, unless being a surgeon, is your thing, there is little as a PA you can't learn and be able to do. And there are PA's doing it.
And here is where all the MD's and DO's will return fire with the idea that the PA can never know what a Dr. knows, and will never be as good as someone who went through medical school. And, like I said above, a PA can read all the same text books you read in medschool, and can turn to their Dr. colleagues and ask questions about complicated pathophys and actuallly gosh darn it, learn the ****, although it probably rarely happens, and people who do want to gain this information think to themselves...." If I am going to learn it, I might has well spend 7 years learning it, then at least when my patients call me their Doctor, I don't have to correct them!" and then they go to medical school!
And then they come to SDN to tell everyone that PA's are good but don't know as much as physicians, uh, DuH?
I think most of this debate is really about people who like the idea of being a PA and the certain freedoms it allows, but would rather go to medical school, then have to deal with physicians who look at PA's like second class citizens of the medical world, and in not such direct ways put PA's "in their place" ..... it's hard for someone who could go both routes (based on grades and test scores etc)to knowlingly seal their fate to a life of being treated badly by some physician with an attitude, so they want confirmation about what being a PA is like (hoping to have some NICE comments posted), and unfortunatley on SDN it's seems most of the reponses come from people who want to use an anonymous thread to reign superiority over the PA's by proclaiming "I am DOCTOR"...... All I ask, is for more humility in medicine. Ego driven physicians give the nice ones a bad name. Stop it!
