Physician Assistant VS Physician: Which is Right for You?

[PaulK]

It depends where you work. Some ERs use PAs for "fast track" type work which is low accuity. Others use PAs as some of the main players (doing all kinds of procedures and seeing many complicated and seriously ill/injured cases). It just depends on the hospital system, the local population, the type of geographic area, etc. Basically, it depends where you choose to work.

Will it get old if you work in one of the lower accuity settings? Well, that depends on you. I work in urgent care, which would generally be similar to that type of work in an ER, and I still find it challenging. There are days when I'm so glad I don't need to do some things - sometimes doing no harm (the biggest mandate in medicine) is the right thing to do. Getting better at your work is a constant learning process/struggle. At other times I've felt that I caught something that really changed a patient's life (I found a 14cm abscess in a patient's abdomen, and the ER had missed it the day before!)

In ANY type of ER, you will need to be on your toes. Patients in the ER can surprise you, and it takes a good clinician to know when their low accuity patient is going to "crump" on them. The mantra that providers in the ER are taught is that on any given day there are people in the ER who are much sicker than they appear/seem. I don't tend to equate the quality of work with how sick my patients are -- that is kind of a one-dimensional way of seeing things in my mind. Part of my job is to be great at the little things. I've seen excellent doctors and PAs who are god-awful lousy at educating patients. Or breaking bad news. Or respecting patient decisions. Or looking at mental health. Or communicating with specialists. Or being liked. The world desperately needs clinicians who are excellent at these things.

I've also seen doctors and PAs who are incredible precisely because they do these things things well. If you do, your patients will respect and appreciate you so much, and this is a part of the job that 25 year-old male PAs never seem to think about. They want it all like ER (the TV show), with patients choking in the parking lot and squirting blood everywhere and holding nurses hostage with scalpels. There is so much more to (good) medicine than fixing the most complicated, life-threatening problems.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. It's all about how you choose to see your work.

[pvoss]

My sister is an MD and I saw how tough residency was. I know PA school will be hard, but in residency they deliberately mess with your ability to function, especially with sleep deprivation, and I would be 49 when I started residency.

[jesperl1230]

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[zoey]

I know its an old thread and I am new here, but I know how these choices make a difference. My niece always wanted to do something affiliated to medicine. The main line was too long and hard. She tried studying economics to maybe go into hospital management. The semester she did economics she would literally cry for the wrong choice she had made. I think that was the turning point. She decided on PA training and her tears were gone. So it takes time, sometimes wrong paths and a lot of perseverance before finding the right path. Btw, the niece has that textbook as a talisman that brought her to her true calling.