Nurse Practioner vs Physician Assistant

Yes, you can get a bachelor’s degree in anything, and then go back to do your premed courses, which are necessary for med school, and also for PA school. Your basic science coursework for nursing won’t meet the requirements for MD or PA school.

If you’ve decided on nursing, you had better get in touch with someone at Penn nursing admissions tomorrow. I’m assuming that you got into Penn’s CAS early decision. There are issues here. You committed to CAS, and it’s a separate admissions process for the nursing school. That being said, I bet that if you contacted the nursing school tomorrow, they might agree to admit you, and the CAS might agree to let you out of your ED commitment to them. The coursework is quite different and specialized for nursing. If you want to be graduated with a BSN in four years, you really do need to start at the nursing school.

Parentologist- I appreciate your perspective- but from a patient’s point of view, it would be a hard sell to have a PA or NP performing “hard core” procedures. I’m happy with my NP interactions-- the first point of contact for a urinary tract infection, strep, and the person who sat with me to review the use and misuse of vicodin post-op. All well qualified to do what they did, took much more time than an MD would have, thorough and reassuring. Expanding beyond that?? Nope.

This is the issue. The patient doesn’t know that the shortness of breath with decreased breath sounds might be a pulmonary embolus, not pneumonia. The UTI might be interstitial cystitis, not a UTI. That awful sore throat that tests negative on strep “but since it looks so bad, let’s treat with antibiotics anyway” might be mono, or worse yet, hodgkin’s lymphoma. But a bone marrow biopsy is a simple technical procedure, doesn’t require algorithmic thinking. Same for a LOT of other procedures. The best person to do it, is the person who does it all day long.

Certainly, discharge counseling regarding medication use/misuse is a very appropriate nursing job - doesn’t require more than an RN. Implementing the plan is one of the traditional roles of the nurse.
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Some people are not interested in medical school, even those who appear to be top contenders. There are many personal reasons behind this decision.

PAs follow more of a medical model (from what I understand) while NPs seem to be a combination of medical and counseling/ more holistic.

NPs I know work right there alongside physicians, yet they are also involved in other things (eating disorders, parent groups etc). It seems more holistic to me. I also know NPs who work privately (PAs cannot work independently).

I have spoken to PAs who are very happy, and have spoken to PAs who are frustrated by the reduced level of responsibility (more so in specialty areas). I have not met unhappy NPs (I am sure they exist, I just have not met any).

I have spoken to unhappy doctors, and several who have said not to go to medical school. One doctor friend was very honest and sat down and listed all the pros and cons and how they relate to work/life balance. And of course there are many happy physicians out there who love what they are doing.

I think the future of primary care will be wide open to NPs and PAs. This doesn’t mean that MDs will be pushed out. They won’t, and they will always be well respected and highly regarded as a profession. I think specialties (orthopedics etc) will still need MDs who are willing to put in all of those extra years of education, beyond primary care. Not everybody wants that.

I see physicians here working alongside NPs and PAs all the time. There is respect all around.

I don’t see any bad choice here- it really depends on your personal goals and expectations. Best wishes!

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