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[quote=Anonymous]I was pre-med, ultimately deciding to go to PA school. I haven't looked at application requirements recently, but ~10 years ago, 2,000 hours of patient care experience was a common requirement (or strong recommendation). A lot of people had been CNAs or EMTs. The course prerequisites were often more than med schools were looking for as well. I ended up taking a couple of years after undergrad to take additional courses and work as a CNA.

Medical school obviously costs more, but MD salaries are substantially more. The program I went to costs a bit over $110k today.

The first year of PA school was coursework. The second year was a series of clinical rotations, usually in the same metro area as the school (albeit sometimes a long commute).

Ultimately, you can expect a fair bit of on-the-job training when a new PA starts their career. In our office setting, a new PA will often shadow for couple weeks. In the hospital, it was one week. While the cases are more complicated there, there's more support from other mid-levels and physicians.

Was it worth it? Maybe. I don't think I would have liked residency and followship, or being on-call, so I'm glad I didn't become an MD. But the hours can still be long, schedule flexibility is limited, and the pay is mediocre.[/quote]

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