Physician or PA???

Question

I was thinking and I don't know which one to pick. What would you pick if you wanted to have a life and the amount of schooling?

Answer 1

It really depends on what type of medicine you want to practice. PAs cannot practice without a supervising physician, which limits career options. Often, PAs function primarily in the outpatient setting, although in some specialties, they may do initial inpatient consultation followed by physician oversight. The most common that I have personally seen are in orthopedics, but they do work in almost any specialty.

Generally speaking, PAs have less schooling (usually a 2-3 year graduate degree) and thus have less exposure to broad medical knowledge and basic sciences which can limit initial understanding of medicine and also do not need to complete residency after schooling. That being said, I have worked with PAs that have done their own self-motivated studying to rival the knowledge of most physicians.

Several PAs that I have spoken to while working in primary care clinics have said that they work only "normal business hours" in clinic without after-hours call, coverage of phone messages, or responsibility for emergent abnormal tests. This gives them more free time than many physicians.