Physician Assistant or Physician?

Question

I want a career for me that can have a good lifestyle and great pay. Which one would you pick? Do PAs have malpractice insursnce?

Answer 1

PA's work for a doc - he has the insurance.

Answer 2

Don`t decide your future according to money you have to spend on compensation. You can be a physician and be happy. My brother like me is a physician.He joked "to err is human and to sue is American"

Answer 3

if youre considering being a doctor solely for the money FORGET IT. some docs make a lot of money -YEARS after they graduate from med school and even then, doctors are making loads less than they used to. you have to work your butt off for at least 11 years before you make any real money, and most students who are in it for the money dont cut it. it sounds like you could care less about helping people and making a difference in healthcare, so i suggest you stay out of the medical profession altogether. you need to have a truly empathetic heart to make it in medicine. if you get a med school interview after completing your med school pre-requisites, and they ask you why you want to be a doctor (and they all do) and you say "to have a great lifestyle" or "to make a good living", theyll throw you out of there and chastize you for not only being selfish, but for being so naive about a doctors life (and if you lie and say "to help people" theyll see right through you; they can spot insincerity from a mile away). you wouldnt HAVE a life if you were to be a doctor who worked enough to make a lot of money. by the way residents make just enough to live on (and sometimes even less than that) and you do residency after med school for at least 4 years (including internship), while you devote 80-120 hours per week to medicine. youre thinking about it for the wrong reasons. as for being a PA, thats almost as difficult, and there are fewer schools, so competition is almost as fierce as getting into med school, so if your goal is to make money, you wont make it near the door. do us in healthcare who do what we do because we TRULY care about other human beings a favor and go into business. make a lot of money there. and yes, you would need malpractice insurance for either job and its EXTRAORDINARILY expensive. this is another reason why doctors make a lot less money nowadays. they shell out a quarter of their pay to protect themselves from patients who want to sue them (and those patients ALWAYS exist and come out of the woodwork when you are a new doctor especially). i know this will sound harsh but people who want to be doctors to have a "good lifestyle and great pay" take spots away from those people who are empathetic towards others and are truly fascinated with the human body and want to advance medicine, and nothing pisses me off more than that.

Answer 4

I believe that PA's work under the physicians insurance or under the facility where they work. If you are going to take the time to go to school for 4, 6 or 8 years, you might as well go all the way! The world needs great doctors and who knows, you may discover something that will change the world!

Answer 5

They're both great, but I would think physicians assistants get paid less but have more free time.  If you are a busy body, be a physician.