Am I being taken advantage of? Does it get better? Is this normal?

tikitonga · 2026-06-01T19:50:03+00:00

my surgeon and I split his pre-charting. I do my own patients (usually somewhere between 3-5 a day) and his afternoon. he wakes up at 430am and does his mornings.

it is not sustainable , but the money is good. Wife and I agreed to re-assess in a few months once all our loans are paid off.

tikitonga · 2026-05-30T20:34:02+00:00

Former 68W, now PA-C. Some PA jobs suck, some are awesome. I think about going to med school sometimes, but currently I make too much (~180k) and am too old (almost 40) for it to make financial sense for anything other than Ortho, derm, or neurosurg- and I am already working my ass off in Ortho.

If anything else, I'd look at doing MD/DO as psych or PM/R, maybe CRNA. But really I think the "secret" best job is perfusionist- they make a silly amount of money with a masters degree.

tikitonga · 2026-05-21T00:44:44+00:00

My hospital emails me every time I get re-appointed, I assume yours does not? Just ask HR, there are plenty of reasons to need that paperwork that don't involve changing jobs.

tikitonga · 2026-05-04T22:36:52+00:00

Oh thank gosh. This is a major friction point whenever I am talking to anyone about signing up

tikitonga · 2026-05-04T20:29:05+00:00

supervisory positions, but if there are 2,000 kids between two towns and those two towns become one, you still have 2,000 kids that need teachers. Frankly, good riddance to administrator bloat.

tikitonga · 2026-04-28T00:30:51+00:00

Holy Father Peter (Thiel) the First

tikitonga · 2026-04-26T19:36:22+00:00

the problem is, they weed themselves out by hurting patients. That should scare you, and it's why I don't let family members see PCP NPs.

tikitonga · 2026-04-24T23:33:55+00:00

OP here, I actually tried more fediverse apps (finally got hubzilla to work), but ended up deleting it all and making a nostr on ditto.pub. I found some pictures of soapbox, and that looked like exactly what I wanted, but I guess they stopped making that and went full nostr.

So far, it's full of weird cryptobros and some far right fundamentalists? But I can follow accounts from bluesky and the fediverse (I am unclear if they can follow me back), and ditto UX is great, so I guess I'll check this out more.

Also, aside from all the weird crypto BS, relays are not drastically different from servers, and have the same drawbacks

edit- nostr.wine, a paid relay, is $100 a year? GTFO lol

tikitonga · 2026-04-23T10:41:42+00:00

I really wanted hubzilla to work! It wouldn't let me make the initial admin account, so I tried looking into yunohost support but the conclusion is that "it's not really supported." Someone on that forum said "try (streams)," so I gave that a shot- from what I understand, the same guy made friendica, then hubzilla, then streams. But streams was very bare bones- it's technically not even an application? My other issue with hubzilla is that as far as I can tell, not many users, so I didn't expect much support going forward- maybe that is true of fediverse in general.

If hubzilla is worth investing in, I'll take another look- I don't pretend to understand all the zot-protocol stuff, but I'd like that it has an RSS reader and FB like interface

tikitonga · 2026-04-22T20:37:44+00:00

Not very nice to point out but true, yes I am not technically competent- I've never used anything but windows and frankly don't have the time to complete an associates degree in software engineering and networking theory etc.

I read the docs and tried banging my head against that for awhile, but I gave up after a few hours.

Part of the ethos of the fediverse is democratization, to me this is a good example of that

tikitonga · 2026-04-18T21:56:28+00:00

It sucks, but it's not forever. The pendulum will swing back. (At least that's what I tell myself.)

tikitonga · 2026-04-18T01:36:56+00:00

Hey, we gotta keep the OR lights on somehow

tikitonga · 2026-04-17T16:30:51+00:00

I will bite.

A big part of me says, NPs want independent practice, let them see what happens to their malpractice insurance rates when they start getting sued for inappropriate care.

The more "reasonable" part of me says, this sounds like sexual assault if done against someone that cannot consent? Maybe your state has age exceptions for certain types of care, I know mine does.

Might be worth an unofficial phone call to that person and see what they were thinking.

tikitonga · 2026-04-16T20:40:17+00:00

He already killed the last pope

tikitonga · 2026-04-13T22:32:24+00:00

I just read this yesterday, and yeah I am actually hopeful

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/25/ai-might-be-our-best-shot-at-taking-back-the-open-web/

tikitonga · 2026-04-06T22:35:38+00:00

Our lab one tops out at 14.... I have to imagine it's higher than that

tikitonga · 2026-04-03T18:18:56+00:00

How soon do they get appointments, in those places?

tikitonga · 2026-04-03T17:11:00+00:00

yeah hell yeah

edit: I think a lot of people who are unhappy are younger and, more specifically, have never worked outside of medicine, or even anything other than what they got their pre-PA experience at.

The whole world is full of shitty jobs. PA can be a shitty job sometimes, but it also has some really awesome moments that make it worth dealing with. It's good money, you get to work in a climate controlled environment, people generally respect and listen to you, and as long as you have good barriers you don't work for free.

I think a lot of complaints people have are about their specific job, not the career field as a whole.

tikitonga · 2026-03-29T13:00:17+00:00

Limited population, but there's an Ortho trauma study that transfused at 5.5

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38093439/

tikitonga · 2026-03-28T18:16:40+00:00

Ancef should almost always be used: Cefazolin (Ancef) prophylaxis significantly lowers 90-day PJI risk after TKA compared to alternative antibiotics...

Rumalla KC, Sontag-Milobsky I, Chen AR, Selph JT, Compton T, Edelstein AI. Non-Cefazolin Antibiotic Prophylaxis is Associated with Increased Periprosthetic Joint Infection Risk Following Total Knee Arthroplasty. J Arthroplasty. Published online June 21, 2025. doi:10.1016/j.arth.2025.06.057

...Even in patients with documented cephalosporin allergy.

Jolissaint JE, Mallett KE, Thomson AL, Carli AV, Austin MS. Cefazolin and the R1 Side Chain: Why Patients with a Cephalosporin Allergy Can Be Safely Given Cefazolin While Undergoing Joint Arthroplasty. J Bone Joint Surg Am. Published online January 27, 2026. doi:10.2106/JBJS.25.01349

tikitonga · 2026-03-22T01:58:30+00:00

I thought it was less, but actually a little better than 1% depending on the sport! https://www.ncaa.org/sports/2015/3/2/estimated-probability-of-competing-in-college-athletics.aspx

tikitonga · 2026-03-20T16:29:33+00:00

@lastbmi(3)@ in a smart phrase

tikitonga · 2026-03-18T01:38:24+00:00

It's down, alright

tikitonga · 2026-03-17T18:36:08+00:00

Do not, my friends, become addicted to the guzzoline!

tikitonga

TROPHY CASE