PA vs Pharmacy i am lost
Started by SuperMero
Get help with your application
Use all the free resources available to you from SDN: articles, guides, expert advising, forums discussions, and school research.
I am saying that because people around me pharmacists working in the pharmacy, fresh graduates, physicians are warning me of what i am about to get myself into. After working in the pharmacy for more than 5 months, I dont see why would someone go to a school for 4 years to count and verify bills. To me I feel that pharmacist are not using their knowledge. PA is a better route. If i dont go to pharmacy school and go chase the PA route, this is not a guarantee. I been thinking and circling my mind to find a solution. I am very stressed out !!!!
The job market sucks and will only get worse but come on, pharmacists do so much more than that. You may not realize everything they are doing because a lot of it is silent work done on a computer.
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
PA training is far superior to NP training.....so PA have a better idea about their limitations, hence of course, they don't have the judgement that MD/DO's have (PA's don't have the training that MD/DO's have.) On the other hand, NP's often act like they know exactly what they are doing (because they honestly think that), because of their poorer training, they are have no idea about all the stuff they don't know about. Far better to be treated by someone who understands their limitations and will refer you up as needed, then to be treated by someone who thinks they know everything there is to know and who will treat you even when your problem is way out of their league.
Physicians are going to be saturated too--as more and more NP's & PA's take over more physician jobs.
Every single career field is saturated or soon will be. I have no idea how to advice my children concerning college.
I'm with CMUchicka on this one. I understand the differences in training, but PAs pretty much start school with no medical background. NPs have inpatient experience in nursing before school. My experiences have been far superior with NPs. This is purely anecdotal, but I've had to call PAs about dumb orders 10 times as much as NPs. Just my 2 cents.
I will say that older NP's are probably more experienced, because most of them did have years of RN experience. Newer NP's often go straight to NP school without actually working as an RN, or they attend NP school on-line while working as an RN. The classes NP's take are nowhere near as intense or focused as PA classes. Plus PA's are required to do far more internship/clerkship/whatever they call it, then NP's do. Many PA's do come from a healthcare background, EMT, even RN's, etc--although you are right that isn't a given the way it is for NP's.
It's kind of scary how proliferative PAs and NPs are in critical care. From my inpatient time, the amount of mistakes both clinical and clerical from them was much, much higher than the average physican. However, I prefer working with them because they were more likely to just let me fix everything without going step by step through a new admission over the phone.
