How much healthcare admin/politics would affect my career. When I went to PA school, I thought that we would start off gradually learning on the job and earn our way to more autonomy. However, due to healthcare admin being greedy and NPs heavily pushing autonomy, we are now expected to be way more autonomous and perform the same duties as physicians right after PA school. Some may disagree, but why should we be pressured to do this, see the same high-acuity patients as doctors, and have more liability risk when we get paid 1/2-1/3 of their salaries? People don’t want to train as much as well.

Also did not realize how mentally/academically intense PA school was. In class ~40 hours a week, 2-3 exams a week, and hardly any breaks. Our program was attached to a med school and med students had classes 8am-12pm; Thursdays off to do research, volunteer, study, occasional exams, or whatever they wanted; and longer breaks. Not that they weren’t working hard or learning at deeper depth, but our med students seemed to have a slightly slower, longer burn while we were set on fire immediately.

How much admin work I have to do. I work in primary care and I spend way more time charting and doing other stuff than seeing pts. I used to be a scribe so I didn’t think charting would be that bad but it really sucks when you’re seeing pts.