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Announcer: Navigating your way through a med school can be tough. Wouldn't it be great if you have a mentor to help you out? Well, whether you're first year or fourth year, we got you covered. The Med Student Mentor is on The Scope.

Interviewer: There's a growing interest surrounding becoming a PA, so we're going to help answer some frequently ask questions if you're considering PA school. We're here with Mia Gah and Kelly Moylan, students in the University of Utah PA Program.

Thanks for joining us, ladies.

First, I just want to hear a little bit about your background. So after you graduated undergrad, what did you do before entering PA school, Kelly?

Kelly: My undergrad was in therapeutic recreation and I worked as a wilderness therapist with troubled youth for about 10 years. I took a slight detour from there. She used to be a ski bum for a period of time...

Interviewer: Awesome.

Kelly: ...which lead me to working as a medical assistant up at the Alta Clinic up at the ski resort. So I was a medical assistant and office manager there for about five years.

Interviewer: Great. All right. So, Mia?

Mia: I studied at the University of Colorado in Boulder and I studied integrated physiology in Spanish. When I graduated, I spent a year and a half travelling and shadowing doctors in Spain.

Then I worked as a medical assistant for about three years at a family planning clinic in Boulder, Colorado. I also did a one year master's program in bio medical sciences at Regis in Denver, Colorado before coming here.

Interviewer: All right. So you probably get this question a lot. Why did you choose PA school over medical school?

Kelly: We do get that question a lot. So I had originally thought I was going to apply to medical school. I was doing the post back for all of that. And as I really started to get a grasp of like time and money it was going to take to graduate from medical school versus time and money it was going to take to graduate from PA school, I had decided that PA school was the way better up to go. I didn't want to graduate and have $350,000 plus worth of debt to pay off at 45.

Interviewer: Absolutely.

Kelly: So PA school seemed to be the better way to go.

Interviewer: Yeah. And did you have a similar experience, Mia?

Mia: I would say that it took me a little while to figure out the best career path for me. I worked with nurse practitioners, with doctors, with nurses. I have a bunch of friends as PAs and I wasn't sure exactly where I wanted to go.

I think that finally I realized that PAs have a unique place in health care today especially with the need for primary care physicians and anybody in primary care and I think PA has play a really unique role in that. And so I thought that would be the best fit for me.

Interviewer: So what do you think it takes to become a successful PA?

Kelly: Step on would be getting into school. It's super competitive. So having the drive to get into a program is key. Once we've gotten there, the drive continues and I would say even increases like tenfold. It feels like it's constant, you don't stop. So just being ready to take it on.

Interviewer: How do you feel about that, Mia?

Mia: I think it's important to really know about career path you want so that you know that you want to be a PA and you don't want to be a doctor and you don't want to be a nurse and what you can do is a PA. I think it's really important to have that foundation.

Interviewer: So what does the job market look like for you once you graduate?

Kelly: We don't probably really know until we start applying. But it sounds like from everything that we're being told that it's only going to increase that there's going to be jobs. It seems like everywhere hopefully. So it looks good and I'm hoping that that's how it's going to be.

Interviewer: Anything you want to add, Mia?

Mia: Yeah. I think that we both said primary care is a good place for PAs, but I also know that from what we've heard, it seems like in any field, I think PA would be a good career path.

Interviewer: If someone is looking in to become a PA and planning on applying for school, how do they prepare themselves now for what is to come?

Mia: I would suggest shadowing a lot of people. So shadowing any field that you're interested in, shadow some radiology techs, shadow some doctors, shadow everybody in the health care field to figure out if that's what you want to do.

And just to get a feel for what types of jobs you can do now to prepare you because you need a lot of clinical hours especially here for University of Utah. Some other programs you don't need as many hours, but those clinical hours are key before you apply, not only to get into school but once you're in school. It's going to help you a lot.

Interviewer: How does somebody really know that being a PA is the right career path for them versus being a nurse or a doctor or something else?

Mia: One thing that drew me to the PA profession was the medical model versus the nursing model. So that was something that set apart PA school from nursing school.

Interviewer: Can you tell me a little bit more about that medical model?

Mia: PA school, I call it mini medical school. I think accelerated medical school.

Kelly: Yeah.

Mia: The nursing model from what I understand, the classes are more theory.

Kelly: And it's more care giving as opposed to...

Mia: Exactly.

Kelly: ...Diagnosing and treating.

Mia: I'm going to focus on primary care again because I think that's a really unique role for PAs. The health care system is very burdened right now. For me, it feels like the health care system as a whole, I'm doing something good.

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