r/physicianassistant

Hi everyone,

I recently graduated and have roughly $222k debt total, all federal loans. I also recently got hired at a PSLF qualifying organization (a non-profit hospital). Looking into PSLF, I found that many people suggest doing the PAYE/ICR plan to have the most affordable monthly payments possible since it will be forgiven in 10 years anyway. This sounds too good to be true to me. With the way the government is nowadays, I can't help but fear that 120 payments later, I'll apply for PSLF and get denied or it simply won't exsist anymore. Any thoughts on these concerns? I really don't want to sell a kidney.

I just had the BEST, most needed 11 day vacation that was best combination of calming, fun and restorative. I even put in few recovery days at home in there so I could just relax at home before returning to work...

But now I literally have the worst Sunday scaries everrrr. I have not looked at my inbox once. I needed complete separation from my duties.

I tasked my coworkers to do it, but I still feel like I’m going to have several patients who are upset because I dared to take a vacation. I feel so so so much dread you guys.

I’m also dreading my annoying ass coworkers who talk to me non fucking stop about everything in their lives and have no boundaries when I have soooo much work to do constantly…

I’m also 14 weeks pregnant and I feel like I can’t get stressed because I’ll hurt the baby. I feel like I should just happy, but I’m mostly just spiraling about how I’m going to do this job while being uber pregnant and then a new, tired mom.

Ugh this is just a rant into the void and I’m looking for people who can relate… thanks

Hi there. I’m posting this because I want to help my partner. She doesn’t know I’m posting this, but I just want to help and I don’t know how.

My partner is a Physician Assistant new grad. She just got back to Maine from living away for the past 2.5 years getting her degree. She loves Maine and has always wanted to work here and give back to the community she loves. She could have easily landed a job right out of school where she got her degree, she in fact had multiple offers, but she wanted to come home and serve her community here.

The insane wait for the Maine board of health licensing aside (still pending, it’s actually ridiculous), she has done everything she needs to do to be an extremely hire-able candidate. BUT, the reason I write this post is that it has been months of applying for jobs, everywhere, not just Portland but all over the southern Maine area, and she hasn’t even received so much as a rejection. No response from anyone. As much as she doesn’t want to admit it, I can tell she is becoming extremely discouraged. Everyone says they’re hurting for healthcare workers, especially physicians and PAs, but she hasn’t had any luck at all, and it’s been months.

My partner has worked so goddamn hard to get here. I know many of you will know this journey. I mean she has had to take the long way around at every step and it’s been so hard to watch, but she comes out on top at the end every time and I’m so proud. We lived apart for the past 2.5 years while she got her degree, she has worked many other healthcare jobs before she went for her degree, including being an EMT. I won’t do her CV any justice on here unless I really get into it, but suffice it to say, she has paid her f-ing dues, she’s brilliant, graduated PA school with a 4.0, and is so charming and determined. She will make a fantastic PA.

If anybody has any advice or leads, or just encouragement, I would love to know how to help her. While I know she would prefer surgery, ER or critical care, I know she will be good wherever she has the chance to prove herself.

PS. She doesn’t know I’m posting here, but I feel so helpless as a partner who is not in the industry, I just want to help.

Thanks for any advice.

TLDR: My Physician Assistant new grad partner is looking for jobs in Maine and getting no responses at all. Any tips, tricks or leads would be greatly appreciated. She’s on all the hiring platforms, they have been useless so far.

I have an offer for a position in the ED and a critical care fellowship. What should I choose? I have about a year of experience in a different field. The fellowship is a significant pay decrease but only about a year long. A job is not guaranteed after the fellowship. I’m truly torn between the two. Any advice? Commute is not an issue for either.

I cannot find a job. I have been ghosted by two recruiters thus far. I had an interview with a Nephrologist that is losing two APPs on Wednesday. I asked him the next day that I was glad to meet him and said he would discuss with his colleagues regarding the position and havnt heard back. I know it’s the 4th of July weekend and maybe I need to take a chill pill. I am in New York and I moved from Arkansas for a job that was not completely transparent to me about all the specifications (in a previous post). Now I’ve signed a year long lease with no job. I’m frantically applying left and right on multiple job sites. Most locums positions require one year of experience. Getting that one year of experience has been hell!! Has anyone had this much bad luck?

I’m a surgical PA at a small, mostly non-teaching hospital so we cover everything. General incl colorectal and breast etc, plastics (mostly recon), urology, ortho, ENT, GYN, a few more to a smaller extent.

I hate the damn robot with a passion. It sucks because I have a great job but I absolutely dread the robot. And of course I understand its appeal and why it’s creeping into so many specialties.

Anyone not doing any robotics? Considering plastics eventually since that’s already a very large part of what I cover

Haven’t seen an updated salary post so thought it’d be helpful and basically our own salary report outside AAPA. Located in Tampa, Fl working as nocturnist PA, 6 years of experience working 7 on 7 off schedule seeing average 10 admissions per night with cross coverage 250+pts. Base salary 130k with monthly RVU bonus, option to earn additional income by covering floor calls remotely and picking up shifts. Last year made 147k. Would love to find another job since burn out is real but unfortunately area is saturated with intro salary offers.

I just found out that CEO of AAPA, Lisa Gables has an annual salary greater than $600,000 while multiple other staff below her have salaries over $300,000. All while the median PA salary is in the mid 100’s. Why have we allowed this to happen?

I'm a PA student at a well-regarded program, currently in clinical year with 4 rotations left. Overall I love this path, but something has been sitting heavy with me and I wanted to see if anyone else has worked through it.

PA school is 2 years without residency, while, MD/DO is 4 years of med school plus 3+ years of residency. That's a massive gap in training time. I think I could make peace with it if new grad PAs went into, say, a required 1-year residency before practicing — that would at least feel proportionate. But as it stands, our education just doesn't feel comparable to an MD's, and yet in a lot of settings (family med especially) a brand new PA is doing essentially the same job as a physician (in most fields) who trained for 7+ years. We have a supervising physician on paper, sure, but in practice that supervision can be pretty loose depending on the state and the practice. How is that gap allowed to exist?

I want to be clear this isn't me second-guessing my career choice. For context: I was premed my entire life until college. I'm a woman from a pretty family-oriented culture, and I knew early on that my career would come second to my family and to raising kids someday. Choosing the MD route felt like gambling with time with my future children — the years of med school plus residency just didn't line up with the timeline I wanted for my personal life. PA felt like the responsible choice for me.

But now that I'm in clinical rotations and seeing what the actual day-to-day scope looks like, the mismatch between "2 years of training" and "functionally practicing like a physician" is messing with my head a bit. Anyone else go through this crisis in clinical year? Did it get better once you were actually practicing and had more reps under your belt? Would genuinely love to hear from PAs a few years out.

A few months ago, I posted about my experience working at Family Health Centers in San Diego. This is an update on what happened after I held my press conference in Chula Vista.

Before the event, several employees told me they had been warned not to attend because, if they were seen there, "it would look very bad for you." Around that same time, the organization had filed a lawsuit against me. I was served with the lawsuit at the press conference, in front of the media. Whether the timing was intentional or not, it felt like an attempt to publicly humiliate me and undermine my credibility.

Since then, the pressure hasn't stopped. I've been forced to defend myself against allegations that I believe are completely baseless. I've also learned that a complaint was filed against my medical license, something I'll eventually have to defend despite believing it has no merit. I've heard claims about me repeated throughout the organization that I believe are false.

Here's what I keep coming back to: all I did was ask for accountability and transparency.

I questioned policies that prioritized metrics over patient care. I proposed workflow changes to improve efficiency without sacrificing quality. I pushed for systems that gave patients the time they deserved and reduced burnout for providers. I believed that was my job.

Instead, I became the problem.

American healthcare is already breaking physicians. We're expected to move patients through like an assembly line while pretending that quality can be measured by a spreadsheet. Compassion isn't a metric. Listening isn't a metric. Taking the extra five minutes a patient desperately needs isn't a metric. But those are the things that actually save lives.

We complain every day about how broken the system is, but if we stay silent because we're afraid of retaliation, nothing changes. Hospitals and healthcare organizations know this. They count on our exhaustion. They count on us believing we're replaceable.

I'm one physician fighting a multimillion-dollar organization with vastly greater resources. Maybe I'll lose. Maybe this hurts my career. I've been told more than once that speaking up wasn't worth it.

I disagree.

Every meaningful change in medicine started because someone refused to accept, "That's just how it is."

If you're thinking about working for Family Health Centers in San Diego, do your homework. Don't let your passion be exploited until there's nothing left of you.

To everyone else in medicine: stop accepting burnout as normal. Stop accepting retaliation as the cost of advocating for patients. Stand together. Support each other. Push back.

Because if we don't fight for our profession, no one else will.

I (38F) worked in primary care for 8 1/2 years, and in the ED for 4 years prior to that. I Couldn’t be more excited to make a switch into GI soon and welcome any suggestions on how I can most prepare myself with up to date GI info for diagnosing and treatment!! Thanks in advance :)

Hey Guys! I am a new grad PA-C and have a passion for emergency medicine and would like to get into the field. As you all know its incredibly difficult finding an EM job as a new grad and understandably so. I have been applying to almost every EM position I can find all over the US as Im willing to relocate anywhere. I've considered a fellowship however, I've found they are also very hard if not harder to get into as they have limited spots. Also many places start their programs at the beginning of the year which is unreasonable to wait that long. I would appreciate if anybody had some tips or suggestions where to look to be able to get into this field?

For reference im from the nj area , im going to be a new grad MA come august I’m trying to figure out if it’s more worth to go through nursing school or to go with PA school I know a good chunk of MA’s go with PA school

I'm hoping to get some perspective because this has been weighing on me for the past couple of weeks.

About over a month ago, I accepted and signed an employment contract for a position that starts in two months. At the time, I genuinely believed it was the right decision, and I was excited about it.

After signing, another opportunity unexpectedly came up that is much more in line with my long-term career goals and better schedule for my family. I interviewed, and it went very well. I'm now waiting to see if I receive an official offer.

The difficult part is that I've already signed the first contract. I reviewed it carefully and didn't see any non-compete language that would prevent me from taking another job, but there is a notice provision of 90 days that has me second-guessing everything. Since I haven't started yet, I'm not sure how that would realistically apply before my employment even begins since the contract has the date of my expected start date.

What has been making me increasingly anxious is that the onboarding process has continued. I've already started credentialing, been added to company communication groups, received study materials, and they're actively preparing for my arrival. Every step of the process makes me feel more guilty because they're clearly investing time and resources into bringing me on.

At the same time, I don't feel comfortable telling them I'm backing out when I don't even have an official offer from the other employer yet. Right now I have one signed job and one verbal offer, but nothing is guaranteed without the offer letter I feel.

If I do receive the second offer and decide it's the better fit, I absolutely plan to notify the first employer immediately. I don't want to waste anyone's time or leave them in a difficult position, but I also don't think it would be wise to walk away from a guaranteed job before I have another signed offer in hand.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Am I overthinking this, or at the end of the day it truly comes down to what's best for me? Is there a chance I could be reprimanded for dragging them along like this? I'm not sure how to handle it after I receive the offer letter.

Hi everyone, I am a PA in urgent care and looking for some good ways to use my allotted $1,500 of CME but not sure what to spend it on. I have all my CME credits done for NCCPA so I don't necessarily need credits, but cannot spend the money on equipment or anything of that sort. I have been practicing in UC for about 3 years now. I was thinking of doing some courses or getting some books on topics I feel weak on like dermatology, but looking for any suggestions anyone might have for some cool/fun ways to spend CME money. Thanks in advance :)

Currently, I am employed at an ortho clinic seeing 40 pt (even tho I'm p much still a new grad) at 130k. I got offered ER position where hourly is better but work out to 110k based of the minimum hour requirement (around 14 shifts/month) and im really worried about that part bc i lives in a HCOL. Definetly better benefits overall for ER and some actual training. I like both specialties somewhat and am getting some first assist experience currently but I am conflicted and a bit confused as to what to do. No other jobs I've applied to are even looking at me so I feel stuck Any advice or thoughts?

Where are my Banner Health PA’s at? What’s the news in the trenches?

I used to work at Banner facilities as a contracted surgical assist. They had such a reputation for being cost cutting. Salaries for PA’s were ridiculously low. Never wanted to pay their providers/anesthesia what they wanted so surgeries would be cancelled leaving patients in a lurch. Meanwhile the C-suite was making some of the highest hospital management salaries in the USA.

I submitted my application about 5 weeks ago. It took them 3 weeks to tell me they needed finger prints which I got and have been accepted for 2 weeks. They told me that it will take another 3-4 weeks for them to even START processing my licensure. My start date is supposed to be September 7th but my job told me accreditation through them can take another 90 days…if it does take a full 90 days we are already way past that point if I am to start on 9/7. My job told me they still will plan for 9/7 and can push it back need be but I am moving across the country and can’t look for apartments on a whim and don’t want to rent a long time before stable income. I would rather have a solid start date and know when I need housing by.

My friends in Pennsylvania who took the boards after me already have their license and are waiting for their DEA.

Is this normal for Washington? My Oregon telemedicine license is almost finished atp. They said they’ll rush certain people but only people who have a sooner start date than me. Do I just lie and say I need it sooner? I knew accreditation would take awhile but this is a bit ridiculous to me and no one has even reached out to me to tell me my fingerprints were accepted even though it’s been 2 weeks since I reached out on my own and they were accepted.

They even told me that they have all the forms they would need from me to be able to start the process and that my application is straightforward.

anyone with experience with WA state licensure please chime in 🥲