Physician Assistant (PA) vs Nurse Practitioner (NP)? Which Route Should You Take?

[Music] all right this is dr. Webb here today I have one of our sports medicine pas she's going to tell us about the film that become a physician assistant as well as how she got to that point hi my name is Otto I'm a doctor website and I'm 38 years old I'm a single mom my journey to being a PA happened in my 30s I reinvented myself after having gone through a career of coaching Division one volleyball although it was an exciting career it didn't quite get my daughter and I in a comfortable situation so because my family has a lot of medical background I got interested in the medical field and not wanting to go through 8 plus years a hub more school I kind of started exploring different routes physical therapy was also an option that I did considered but I looked more into the PA route because I was really interested in and surgery so I started to do prerequisites that I needed although I already had a master's degree I still needed some like organic chemistry using anatomies and stuff that I didn't have so I took those and got and got that done and started shadowing which is another really big thing you got to do but it was probably about a four-year journey before I was finally in so my name is Paige I am a pediatric orthopedic nurse practitioner so I'm actually a family nurse practitioner working in the specialty of Pediatrics well it's education isn't it take to get to become a be a reporter yeah so you still you have to have a bachelor's degree at least I had a master's degree but you have to at least have a bachelor's the PA program is a master's degree so that requires a master's degree in nursing and so that that requires you to have a Bachelors of Nursing first there are alternate routes but that's the most traditional route is a Bachelor of Nursing you don't have to work as a nurse first before entering the master's program but most people do work at least a couple of years I worked about two years in between and then there are different tracks that you can choose when applying to program and describe a typical day for you stars like 8:00 or certain 7:00 it goes to four or five what is a typical day for you as a PA or I'll join the students okay so now that I am in a surgical role my days vary so as you know as a resident your days can start sometimes at 6 a.m. but a clinic day would start at like 8 a.m. then it goes until the last patients taken care of her so like today we're got down around 3:00 it's a early day sometimes when you're to 5:00 5:30 and then surgery day is also vary so at my job here I mostly work in the clinic so it's usually 8 2 4 8 to 5 and I usually work alongside a pediatric orthopedic surgeon running the clinic but I do have days where I see patients independently my own and I see any number of conditions with kids with orthopedic problems ranging from fractures to congenital deformities and things like that coming out of school how much training yeah so average salary in the state of Texas for PA is about ninety thousand a year and then it increases or decreases depending on your role so coming out of the gates most people will be like are in an eighty eighty-five and then they can increase from there the highest that I've heard of coming out of school is in plastic surgery or neurosurgery and that's about a hundred and ten starting so it depends on the type of practice that you go into so on if you look up the average salary for like a pediatric nurse practitioner it's like eighty five thousand dollars a year whereas when you get into some of the surgical specialties and I know emergency respective shooters make a lot more they make more like upwards of a hundred thousand dollars a year and have a lot of students and followers who are concerned about their age and going to medicine what do you think about going into medicine at an older age maybe 45 part thirty years left oh-o-oh duration I like it 21 - siz a huge element in maturity so although I had PA school with perfectly capable young students who were not necessarily veterans in the work world but were really smart and knew had a study and knew how to take those tests but there was definitely a difference in the people who already had work experience life experience and I found that that's one of the reasons I got into PE school and I found out that's why I've gotten hired because that's what people look for - so it's benefited me it hasn't hurt and a lot of people are asked the question NP versus PA versus MD what made you choose the NP routes and your thought something like going versus MD versus NP what do you any adults well to be honest I'll clarify the difference between a nurse practitioner and a PA is pretty minimal at this point I went with a nurse practitioner because I already had my bachelor's in nursing and but you end up with pretty much the same role as a PA just a little bit different route in terms of the nurse practitioner versus MD it's less school there's way more flexibility in terms of how you get to the end result of becoming a nurse practitioner so there's a lot of ways a lot of different paths you can take and then in terms of your job you have a lot more flexibility there obviously you don't get paid as much but you have a little bit less responsibility and you have the flexibility to be able to choose one field and work in it for a couple of years and then decide you don't like it and choose a different field and the advice that I definitely would always give to people when they ask any question is to shadow as many pas so being an environment where there's not only physicians that you can kind of ask questions to but specifically shadow epa's follow them see what they're doing try to find out what their involvement level and some pas are kind of kept in clinics and not doing much and others do a lot more and have more autonomy so I think nursing is a great option for anyone looking for job security and also flexibility and it's great for people that like to work with a team and for people that want a lot of responsibility but again kind of work collaboratively with other team members also thank you so much

Channel: Antonio J. Webb, M.D.

Views: 53,065

Rating: 4.9358287 out of 5

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Id: 63tgpyyoEGk

Length: 8min 14sec (494 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 29 2017