What do Physician Assistants really do??And where do they work?

I need a physician assistant to help me answer questions for homework?

• Hi I am a senior in high school and I am doing a report on Physician Assistants and I was wondering if I could either email or call any Physician Assistants willing to help me with this assignment. I have 20 questions so you could maybe answer them here or provide information of another form of communication that would be awesome! thank you so much! 1. Tell me about your job. Is what you do different in any way from what others in your occupation do? 2. Can you tell me about your background and how you got into this field? 3. What are some personal characteristics required for someone to be successful in your job? 4. What other jobs could you do with the skills you have acquired in this field? 5. How much job security is there for people in your field? How has the latest economic struggle impacted your profession? 6. What do you think the future holds for people in your job? 7. What are the biggest challenges in your occupation? 8. Are there many opportunities in your field? What should people do to get started? 9. What advice do you have to give a young student interested in becoming a physician assistant? 10. Please describe the day in the life as a physician assistant. What is your typical daily schedule? 11. What interests, activities, and hobbies do you have that relate to this job and make it more enjoyable? 12. What are some of your likes and dislikes about your job? 13. What is the relationship between you and your coworkers like? Is there an obvious chain of command or are you all somewhat equal? 14. What training did you need in order to become a physician assistant? 15. What made you choose this profession and for how long have you wanted to do this? Did you ever have any doubts or feelings that you weren’t right for this job? 16. What type of environment to PA’s typically work in? Are the usually in hospitals or clinics as well? 17. When it came down to choosing whether you wanted to be a physician or a physician assistant, what factors came in to play as you made your decision? 18. How have the new health care reform plans affected your job now and what are the plans for the future? Will it have any impact on job security or income? 19. What tasks can a physician perform that you cannot? What are the main differences in your positions? How do you work together? 20. Is there flexibility among which specialties you can have or does that require excessive schooling and training to switch or change specialties as a PA?

• Answer:

  I answered a similar question recently, not sure if it was from you. I'll do my best. Here goes... 1. I work in a surgical / trauma ICU, I also run the line service where I place central venous catheters and PICCs in patients throughout the hospital. I do a lot of teaching for the surgical interns and medical and PA students. I am also involved in research. 2. I went to a pediatric PA as a kid and learned about the profession from him and also a family friend. I went to PA school straight from college as my first career. 3. To work in the medical field you need to be determined as the schooling is intense. You need to be compassionate, intelligent, efficient, able to work with many other types of providers (doctors, therapists, nurses etc.) and constantly keep up to date on the latest medical knowledge. 5. The PA profession is one of the fastest growing and has been on the top 10 professions list recently. Job security is difficult for everyone in this economy however with a physician shortage in many parts of the country there is a need for PAs. 6. The PA profession is growing every day and is becoming more recognized than ever before. 7. Although the profession is growing, any patients and providers are still not clear on what PAs are and what we are capable of. 8-9: Find a local PA to shadow for a day to get an idea of what he/she does. Speak to your school counselor. Visit AAPA site for more info (www.aapa.org). 10. Schedule varies greatly depending on whether you work in an inpatient or outpatient setting and the specialty. 13. I work with several attending physicians who treat me as a colleague (not quite equal since I am still relatively new to the field but they respect my opinions). 14. 2 yrs college, 2 yrs PA school 17. PA school is much shorter than med school and there is no residency so the schooling and training is significantly shorter and you can start working much faster. 19. PAs can perform all tasks and procedures which the attending physician allows. There needs to be physician supervision however the doctor does not need to be physically there when you see patients, the doctor just needs to be available just in case. 20. The advantage of PA over NP is that there is more flexibility. PA programs prepare you for any field where you then get hands on training. Hope this helped. Some of the questions were kind of repetitive so I skipped those. Let me know if you have more questions. Good luck!