PAs make a great salary. The job is consistently ranked among the happiest occupations out there, and I don’t doubt it for a second. It’s a great gig. I love being PA and I LOVE surgery, but it isn’t hard for me to imagine being unhappy at work.
My first gig out of school I was working 40-60 hours with one doc — side by side all week. We got along great. I learned a ton, and we had a good time, but I can easily picture a world where it wouldn’t have worked out so well. When I graduated, I was looking for someone to pay me, that’s it. I wasn’t thinking too much about interviewing the person I’d be working with. What if he’d been an awful surgeon? What if he were mean? What if he chewed with his mouth open?
I don’t know what I would have done. I was in a terrible place financially at the time I took my first job. I had created a HUGE mess, and I didn’t even really know it. I had my head in the sand thinking I’ll earn my way out of this without ever looking at the actual numbers. I was a mess and had no clue how to handle any money. If I had quit that job, we would have been in big trouble. Thankfully for me, it was a non-issue. He was a great surgeon, a good teacher and we got along well, but that isn’t always the case. I’ve heard some good stories over the years.
Just before graduation one of my best friends in PA school landed her dream job. Orthopedic surgery. She had been an athletic trainer, and this was all she’d dreamed about for three years. She also got an AMAZING starting salary. Gotta say I was jealous.
Three months later they let her go. Not because of anything she did. They let her go because they hadn’t done the math right and they couldn’t afford to pay her. I’ve heard this story more than a few times now as well.
How would you cover that gap? What would you do? Could you afford to be out of work for a few months while you look for a new job and get credentialed at a new hospital?
Just this morning I was working with a nurse who’s paying her son’s student loans until he gets a job. As soon as you graduate those payments kick in whether your working or not.
In this months issue of Physician Assistant Exam Scholar’s Newsletter, I’m going to show you how to get out in front of these issues. You can’t solve it all in a day or with one paycheck, but if you do the right things from the day of graduation (or even better from well before graduation), it can change the whole course of your career.
Let me show you how. But you have to hurry. The March issue goes to the printer tonight.
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Physician Assistant Exam Scholars
Brian