Anyone willing to pay you to interact with patients is paying for your 2-3 years of extra education, son!
I’m not outraged that folks are looking for the easiest way to make Np and Pa type money, and do so the fastest. But to break it down and make the journey ore palatable (which, to answer your question is, no, there isn’t a faster and easier way out there to have the patient interaction and salary of an NP or PA), just remember that PA and NP IS the faster and easier way into a field that offers a decent reward for the responsibility of having someone else’s wellbeing in your hands. The folks that are the top of that hierarchy are physicians. The 2 or three years of extra school that you would want to sidestep is the actual training that adds value to your profile. The patient that you see gets nothing out of your previous bachelors degree, and doesn’t care that you have that, because they are paying for the degree that makes it so you can know what is wrong with them and do something about it.
I hear you because I was in the same boat with biology degrees of my own, and it seemed like that should have counted for something. Recognizing that it really doesn’t matter much (apart from making life a little easier for you when you are applying that knowledge to the new knowledge you are learning) is actually a healthy realization. And if you think about it, you don’t really want to live in a world where that kind of chaotic score keeping is rewarded with high pay and relative prestige. You will want your physician to have performed the required training from scratch, just like your PAs, your mechanics, your police officers, your dentists, your firemen.... pretty much anyone out there needs to know the practical aspects of their job. You will find that the reward you reap from your masters might be that you get to spend more time with your family while the rest of your nursing class has to pour over material that you already know. But basically, even then, that kind of advantage is relatively brief because learning medical treatment concepts involves a lot more new information that you will have to master. That’s why they can’t sit back and respect your degrees that are already earned... because it ultimately doesn’t matter as much as the 2 or 3 years of material they have to present to you for mastery.
To be honest, I think that there are lots of jobs out there that are easier ways to make money than becoming a physician, and even a Pa or NP. My cop relatives make decent money starting in their early 20s, have great benefits and are locked into a great retirement system... all things that aren’t guaranteed to me. Heck, the best thing I could have done in my early 20s would have been to get on at the post office. Even teaching, under the right circumstances, would have been a better return in my investment of time and money than chasing NP. Regular hours, summers off, no holidays and weekends... never had that for myself in any healthcare career I’ve been in. I’d gladly spend time setting up a system to rapidly correct my papers within an hour or two after the kids go home so I could have the rest of the night to myself, and run some other business on the side, like lawn care in the summer months, or outdooor outfitting. My friend does that with his spouse (who also teaches), and they get the same days off with their kids, and they make much more that I ever will as an NP. My souse and I are used to seeing each other in passing most of the week due to healthcare careers.
Just bite the bullet and own your decisions you’ve made to this point. There is no magic for the magician, he just has to put in the work to obtain what everyone thinks is easy. You want to touch patients and make money doing it, you have to bring something to the table that is more than your previous degrees gave you. Frankly, two years is in many ways not even optimal for the minimum requirement to become a Pa or NP, so be glad that that is even still available. Nursing academics are pushing for the doctorate of nursing practice to be the minimum threshold for entry into the NP field, and the PA realm has their own doctorates they are toying with.
