Choosing a specialty

Are you thinking about switching residency programs? If so, you’re not alone. Choosing a specialty in medical school isn’t easy. You’re required to make a career-long decision from a series of brief rotations, each spanning a couple of weeks to months and then hope you made the right choice. Most of the time, this works read more…

Do you love working with kids? Are you the “fun uncle” or “fun aunt” in your family? Do you know all the lyrics to “We Don’t Talk About Bruno?”  If you answered yes to any of these questions, a career as a pediatric physician assistant (PA) may be for you! To help you decide, we’ll read more…

One of the best perks of the PA profession is the diversity of career paths you can take after graduation. It’s so interesting looking back and seeing where all my classmates ended up! I have friends across the board of physician assistant specialties, which is especially helpful when looking for advice. With such variety of read more…

If you regularly proclaim the benefits of petroleum jelly as a skin moisturizer and think it is superior to antibiotic ointment for wounds, becoming a dermatology physician assistant may be the right career choice for you! Of course, people get into the field for different reasons. My own interest in dermatology stems from a curiosity read more…

Congratulations! You’ve made it to internal medicine residency and are settling into the swing of things. As you hunker down for the rest of the 3-year adventure, another big decision looms on the horizon: should you pursue an internal medicine fellowship after residency? And what does the internal medicine path to fellowship look like?  According read more…

I have written a lot of generalized blog posts on the PA experience, but I have yet to take the time to really explain my career. While I’ve known for some time that I wanted to go into the field of Cardiothoracic Surgery, I did not actually get this position right out of graduate school.  read more…

Maybe you settled for a specialty you’re less excited about or entered a nonspecialized field with a plan to specialize in the future. Or, you thought your specialty would be the perfect fit at first, only to learn it wasn’t at all what you expected. No matter how you got here, one thing is for read more…

Deciding to become a nurse practitioner may be one of the more significant decisions in your life. Your career options are diverse and there is no limit to the future need for your services. Still, you’ll have more milestone decisions to make on the path to your dream career. One of these decisions will be read more…

One of the perks of the Physician Assistant profession is being able to work within any medical or surgical specialty. In fact, in speaking with most of my clients (future PAs), they love the idea of being able to change specialties throughout their careers. So how do you choose which specialty is right for you? read more…

Cardiology is an exciting and rapidly evolving field of medicine. As America ages, the roles of a PA-C in cardiology continue to expand. They can be found in an office, hospital, and operating room, working in both adult and pediatric care. So whether ECGs excite you or send you running for help, cardiology can still read more…

Life transitions always take some adjustment…even when they’re exciting changes. Moving, expanding your family, getting a new job—you’ll go through many revisions throughout your lifetime. Sometimes they’re planned and expected, and sometimes they’re not, but each transition requires you to get out of your comfort zone. One of my big life changes was a decision read more…

You just spent the past 24–36 months preparing for the biggest exam of your life, the PANCE. You sign onto the National Commission on the Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA) dashboard and there before your eyes is the “C.” You did it! You are officially a PA-C. But now what? How about landing your first read more…

“Keep your minds open,” the dean announced at M3 orientation, “maybe you’ve always dreamed of becoming an orthopedic surgeon but will fall in love with psychiatry.” As freshly minted third year medical students with wrinkle free and yet to be coffee/pen/bodily fluid stained short white coats we entered clinical rotations much like undifferentiated cells, eager to be shaped and influenced as we transformed into the future physicians we were to become. However, for many students, choosing a specialty is not as easy as dreaming and falling in love. There is a fine line three quarters into M3 year when the reaction to uncertainty about choosing a specialty changes from a response of “you’ve got time” to a reaction that may make you feel like somehow over a few short months you became defective. In the midst of the uncertainty and doubt you then receive an email that it’s time to schedule your fourth year electives and are advised to “choose them wisely” as you are reminded that residency applications will be due just three months into the year. If that story sounds all too familiar of you anticipate that this could happen to you, don’t panic, you’re not alone, let’s get through this together.