How to Gain Clinical Experience Prior to PA School

Most if not all PA schools require some number of hours working in a healthcare setting. 2,000 patient contact hours? That is a year of full-time work. Remember, PA programs started as a way to educate naval corpsmen so they could be transitioned into a provider role. This means that the whole foundation of the PA profession is based on taking someone who already has professional clinical experience and elevating their education. I am going to discuss my opinion on how to gain clinical experience prior to PA school. These different ways include working as a medical assistant, in EMS, or as a CNA or nurse. You will learn about my personal experience in two of these fields. My hope is that you can use this information to figure out which path is best for you.

Medical assistant

Most medical assistant jobs require certification prior to working. Unless you are lucky like I was and are able to find a job that will train you in-house. Working in dermatology fell into my lap when one day one of the EMTs I volunteered with was talking about her medical assistant job and how they were hiring. I was about to graduate from undergrad and I had just applied and been accepted for a full-time job as an EMT. Up until this point, I had only been volunteering and working night shifts as an EMT on the weekends. I was at a crossroads. Either I could continue with what I knew and finally get paid to do it, or I could learn a whole other skill. I decided the diversity in my application would help me more than simply continuing with EMS. This was one of the best decisions I have ever made for my career. 

Working as a dermatology medical assistant in a busy private office was difficult, to say the least. There was definitely a learning curve. The clinic that had hired me for the most part only employed recent undergrads who were interested in one thing, pursuing higher education. There were so many of us with goals to ultimately go to either PA school or medical school. Guess what? Everyone I worked with ended up doing just that. In this role, I was so much more than just a medical assistant. I was a scribe, and a phlebotomist, I did pre-op and post-op wound care, learned common billing codes, argued with insurance companies, filled out biologic paperwork for expensive medications, and educated patients on their skin cancer diagnoses. The list goes on and on. Needless to say, it was an extremely valuable two years of work and it prepared me well for PA school and for my career today.

EMT/Paramedic

Emergency medical services (EMS) is another great way to obtain direct patient experience. You will absolutely have to be certified in order to pursue this line of work and certification can take several months. I got my EMT-B certification one summer while in college. I was working as a full-time nanny during the day and going to classes at night. EMS prepares you well for stressful situations and you are going to really quickly get in and get your hands dirty (literally and figuratively). Once I was certified I worked one night shift every weekend or sometimes every other weekend.

EMS is very different from working in an office or a hospital. For example, you only work when there is an actual emergency call. There were some shifts (though rare) where I was on the clock for 12 hours and didn’t see a single patient. Now, this will be completely dependent on where you work of course. This only happened occasionally if I was in one of the more rural-based stations. If you are in a city then disregard that last statement, as you will likely be extremely busy. You will learn pretty quickly how to distinguish a sick patient from a patient who is not sick. This job will test you and mentally prepare you for the world of healthcare. It will teach you skills that few other jobs can. 

CNA/Nurse

I did not obtain direct patient care experience as a CNA or a nurse but it is another path I would highly recommend especially if you are able to obtain a position in a hospital setting. Friends have told me that you will learn humility with this position. Friends who worked as CNAs also shared that you will have higher respect for the different layers and career positions within the healthcare system. We are after all a team with the same goal in mind, to care for the patient. Working as a CNA can also teach you about the hospital system. This knowledge is something I didn’t have much of going into PA school which may have prepared me a little more. I had volunteered in the emergency department but that plus dropping my patients off with EMS was the extent of my experience in a hospital.  

This is by no means an exhaustive list of how to gain clinical experience. There are tons of other options for direct patient contact hours such as being a phlebotomist or an athletic trainer. Some schools will also consider a scribe or patient transport. While these can all be great experiences they would not be my first recommendation. You will also want to check with specific schools if they will allow these other types of clinical experiences. You can normally find this information on the program’s website.

I worked as a medical assistant and volunteered as an EMT. I believe this diversity of clinical experience gave me an edge when applying to schools even while having a relatively low GPA, which you can read more about here. Once I was accepted into PA school, I was able to use the knowledge and skills I learned and apply them fairly easily in both the didactic and clinical settings. Have you started obtaining your patient contact hours yet? If so comment below with how you are obtaining them!