Being A Physician Assistant Essay

A physician assistant (PA) is a professional in the health field who practices medicine with physicians as well as other providers (1). The representative working conditions for a PA are indoors in hospital setting with a well-lighted environment. PAs often walk a substantial amount and if they are a surgical PA they may be required to stand for several hours (2). Someone who is aspiring to be a physician should have strong interests in the health field, science, and working with people. Important soft skills that a PA should have would be communication skills, tact, good interpersonal skills, organizational skills, flexibility, and an overall calm, professional manner. There are also technical skills, which include writing minutes, report

While a PA must sign off under a physician at all times, they are still able to write prescriptions, and unlike a physician, they can enjoy the freedom of moving to different specialties within the health field and are not locked into one practice. A PA program is also only two to three years as opposed to four years plus a three-year residency in medical school, meaning someone in this career is able to start working sooner with less debt than a physician. The greatest satisfaction to being a PA is that they have the perfect balance between life and medicine while still receiving a high paying salary. PAs have less administrative responsibilities than a physician and abundant job opportunities as the job growth for PAs is expected to grow thirty percent from 2010 to 2020 (5). When I was an intern in the Emergency Room I always asked the physicians if they could go back and do it over again would they have still chosen to be a physician or would they have rather been a PA? Overall there were more doctors who would have rather gone the PA route and only two PAs who wanted to be a physician instead. As far as a PAs hour, it really depends on the specialty. Surgical PAs can work as much as eighty hours a week and be on call while family practice PAs work about forty hours a week with a 9-5 day (6). While there are traveling PA careers, such as being a PA in the military, most stay in one office of a physician.

The education required that a prospective PA needs to be accepted into an accredited program is a Bachelor's Degree which showcases a strong background in science, including the courses: Inorganic Chemistry, Organic Chemistry another 300 level additional chemistry course, five courses in Biology 200 level and above (genetics, physics, physiology, cell biology, biochemistry), a biostatistics course, psychology, and sociology. In addition, PA programs require the Graduation Rate Exam and a minimum GPA of 3.4 for most programs but a current average of 3.72 are being admitted to Butler's PA program (4). PA programs last two to three years depending on the program. The cognitive competency requirements expected in a PA program are for students to develop the critical thinking for medical decision making as well as the ability to conduct medical primary literature searches, interpret pertinent research findings and apply them in clinical practice. The non-cognitive competency required upon completion of PA programs include a range of skills such as working as a member of a team, writing detailed patient histories, performing physical exams, ordering labs, writing drug orders, perform a range of clinical procedures, counsel patients regarding their health, and referring patients to other facilities or resources