OP, don’t worry about making a choice now. Things happen. People really need relevant experiences before they can make good decisions. My oldest earned a BSN. She thought she would finish her medical school prereqs and go to med school. The difference between PA/NP/MD have been discussed, but it was her assessment that if she were going in, it was going to be at the top of the food chain, not the middle.
She went to work in a large teaching/university hospital. And met physicians. And doesn’t like what they do. At all. This is not the kind of stuff one learns by a shadowing experience or two in high school but by day in/day out exposure to the medical community. (If your child is really interested in medicine, get a job in the hospital!) She will start an MSN in the fall, with a goal of a PhD program after that. She will not earn what a physician earns, but she won’t have the debt either.
You also want to keep an eye on what is happening in the fields of interest. The hospital where oldest works no longer wants new master’s level NPs. It wants DNPs. Great, the more training the better (at least from my perspective as a patient!), but the field is changing. Healthcare is also a huge field. There are people associated with direct care (RNs, MDs, RRTs, NPs, CNAs etc) but there are also accountants, admins, HR personnel…
Parallel means they are separate fields. The nurse is not in the same field and just lower in the chain of command/on the ladder. Post # 40 offers an example of how very different the fields are even while taking care of the same patients in the same setting. Different types of people choose different types of work (even with fields- psych and surgery personnel are different). Poster #40’s D discovered that indeed nursing was the better choice for her and getting more education in that field was more to her liking. It is not a matter of being able to do either job as nurse or physician, it is a matter of the type of work one prefers.
People who basically want the large income should go into business- the job to make money and not endure the lengthy training with all of the guts/gore/pressure… unless one really likes medicine. The financial return on one’s investment is not a reason to become any profession (unless it is a business field where that is the objective).
@ColoSky, I think what @wis75 is alluding to is not just a different level in the food chain. It is true that doctors were the top people in health care, though now it is often corporate types at places like HCA and insurers who drive a lot of medical practice. Doctors are second in the food chain (and are sometimes the execs). NPs and PAs are lower in the food chain and PAs are generally required to be supervised by an MD and NPs in some states are required to do so or at least to bill through an MD. In other states, NPs can run their own clinics.
But, the distinction I think @wis75 is getting at is philosophical. NPs are trained in patient-centered care. They look at the whole patient. They probably spend more time talking to the patient. MDs are trained in the medical model, which is symptom/disease-centered care. Both have studied the diseases but the MDs have typically done so in more depth, sometimes in considerably more depth.
I am a medical student who posts here from time to time and figured I would weigh in. Given that BSN is what is required to go on to NP or CRNA level of training, and pre-med is difficult to combine with a BSN, I think you’re thinking about it at the right time. Has he shadowed any? From my experience, CRNA’s and NP’s will say things like “Dr. X likes it this way, and Dr. Y likes it that way.” I knew then and I know now that I want to be the person deciding “how I like it,” not practicing according to someone else’s style on a given day. I originally started in a BSN program at the suggestion of my father, but realized I wanted the challenge of getting through the most rigorous training, and haven’t regretted it.
Look carefully at the COA of medical school and PA school - they’re closer than you think. Last year, my school’s average PA debt and MD debt was just 10k apart. The caveat may be that MD students come from better off families, some of whom definitely cover the entire cost. Many others are also happy to help with some extra expenses to make their children’s lives a bit more palatable. Far from all medical students live this hellish books-only existence that many seem to think. Anyway, I am biased Feel free to message me.
I am a physician, and so is my spouse. None of our 3 kids are going into medicine with the exception of my daughter who is pursuing a phD in psychology, a highly competitive field that is harder to get into than medical school. (Partly because most good PhD programs pay you, instead of the other way around- though her motivation is that she doesn’t want to take care of deeply disturbed individuals who would require the car of a psychiatrist.).
Anyway, I believe that an MD is still a great choice if you are driven, can do it at low cost and/or can choose a highly paid field (mostly subspecialties such as gastroenterology, invasive cardiology, etc.). For primary care you’re better off pursuing a PA or RNP degree because the opportunity cost of being a physician is too great.
Despite the growing physician shortage, being a physician is not an easy life even after medical school and residency. Frankly, most potential doctors are capable of doing many other things, and in general I’d advise you to do so unless you have a deep desire to serve, in which case it can be very gratifying.
worth2try. You must not be in the clinical years yet. I remember thinking I would drop out if the final two years were the same as the first. Vastly different. You are cramming as much book knowledge as you can into two years so you have it when facing the patient care years. Those are the rest of your career.
As a physician I resent nurses being seen as whole patient caring while we physicians are not. We do care but our job also involves a lot more and we need to focus on that and let others do the nurturing part. Not enough time to be everything to everybody.
@wis75
I am in the clinical years now. My comment about books, if that’s what you’re referring to, was more in response to the sentiment that medical students and residents don’t see the light of day. My classmates still do things normal 20-somethings do, but just less often than their peers making solid salaries.
Hi have been away. I want my child to have a career once he is done with college in med school isn’t in the cards - I’m not “locking” him into anything, he can surely become a doctor at age 35 if he wants BUT with school debt and the reality that he WILL need to get a job, why not get him into his first career track in something that will pay the bills and get him some good experience. I personally went to a highly rated school and was an English major which allowed for few job opportunities and ended up going back for a Masters in Business. I wish someone had helped me along toward a career rather than a “liberal arts” education which paid me very little. Business, Engineering, Comp Sci and medical are really good career tracks that pay the bills and my child will need to do that after graduation.
Mom…- your kid needs to do something he likes, if not passionate about. Having a good/high paying job you dislike means torturing yourself for the majority of your waking hours. Your kids will hopefully do what they want to do, not what you think they should do. I’ll bet family interests run more into humanities than sciences so don’t be surprised if the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I’ll bet most liberal arts grads, despite needing to find alternatives to that for earning a living, are glad they had the chance to indulge in it. btw- sciences are part of the liberal arts.
Relax, encourage your kid to follow HIS dreams for college. I’m sure he is aware of your history and may have plans for what to do outside of the fields you are pushing. I know I took may nonscience electives instead of just more science. Being well rounded and not too job focused is why college is for an education and not just job training.
@momtofourkids, I always say that a person has succeeded in life if a) he/she can get up in the morning wanting to do the things he/she is going to do that day at work and b) that the world treats him/her well (where (which is defined by the person, so being treated well could involve money, respect, autonomy, a sense of helping, etc.). A precondition is probably that he/she is good at what he/she does. The first condition is the passion that @wis75 is talking about. The second is related to your concern over making a good income.
The guidance that I would give to my kids is to balance both. Find something you are passionate about but also make sure you get some skills that will be useful in the modern economy. In an ideal world, tie them together. Medical skills (whether for medicine or NP/PA) work, though there is some question as to what gets automated when. Engineering and CS work, but so does anything quantitative (which you can get in math, statistics, physics, chemistry, economics, sociology, political science, etc.) and some familiarity with coding. Given the likely changes in the structure of the economy, learning how to think well and how to think in different ways probably will help the most. I’m less excited about undergraduate business majors as they may be learning more specifics rather than the how to think. Before people get upset, I am confident that this generalization is not universally true. For the knowledge oriented businesses I have started, I have found the undergraduate business majors to be the weakest performers. Not enough mental dexterity. Let’s not debate that here. Just my perception.
In an ideal world, one combines one’s passion, one’s useful skills, and one’s talents. But it may not always work. My son’s ex-GF was an English major (she wrote poetry) and decide to also be a CS major at a high-end LAC. She was very clear that she would need to get a job and was pretty clear that poetry would not do it. She is bright – graduated summa in English. She was probably not the strongest CS grad that the software consulting firm hired but is technically competent and has good people skills. I’m not sure she loves it, but I suspect that her people skills and writing skills she will move into more sales or management roles and be effective.
Feel free to message me.