 I wasn't trying to like sneak around the fact that I'm not a doctor, I'm a PA, I'm very upfront, I'm very honest about it, and I'm very proud to be a PA. And I communicate that to the patients. No. Look at that knife hand. That's courtesy of the United States Navy. No. No, I'm not a doctor. No, I'm not. I'm a PA. Hey guys, so this is day four in a row of making videos. We're halfway through the week. I made a New Year's resolution, kind of an early New Year's resolution, to post every single day for one week, just to kind of get in the habit of making sure this is a priority, making sure that this is something I'm going to do regularly in the upcoming year, 2022. So growing the channel is a big priority of mine. I really want to get some of what I have to say out there, both to pre-med students, pre-PA students, anyone trying to improve their grades. And also, like I said a couple videos ago, I really want to start transitioning the channel to what I'm really currently passionate about and what I'm working in professionally, and that's medically supervised weight loss. So I'm not going to be doing a whole lot of medical stuff, but it's going to be more weight loss coaching, things that have worked for me in my own fitness transformation and whatnot. So all that's coming, I have less than a handful of videos about dieting and exercise so far. But there's going to be a lot more in the future as I have more and more patient interactions and counsel more and more patients about losing weight, keeping it off, being healthy. And also just as my own fitness journey unfolds and I learn more and more things, what works, what doesn't, what really helps me for dieting, for exercise, for building muscle, all that good stuff that I'm really passionate about, that's going to be kind of the new focus of the channel. But at the same time, I'm not going to abandon the people that follow me for my advice on how to get into PA school, how to study, how to interview well, and things like that, how to write essays. So it's going to be, I guess, kind of a two-prong channel, PA school, grad school, study skills, and then also the whole health and fitness side of it. So I'm not sure if it's going to kind of, at some point, morph into two different channels, but it's definitely not big enough for that right now. I mean, it's a tiny channel. So yeah, that's just kind of the plan going forward, just wanted to let you know that. So anyway, the topic of today's video is going to be, are you a doctor? So I've only been practicing as a physician assistant for about two, maybe three weeks. And this question has already come up a handful of times. At least a few times after the patient interaction, after we talked about all the complaints and issues and ordered some labs and testing and whatnot, and I developed the treatment plan and discussed it with them, the question comes, Oh, are you a doctor? Even though when I came in the room, I said, Hi, I'm Boris. I'm a physician assistant working with Dr. Oh, you know, my standard greeting. Most people don't know what a PA is or what a physician assistant is, or like when I get in the room, they're so focused on what they want to talk about, they don't even hear what I say. Whatever the case may be, my patients do keep asking me, are you a doctor? And of course, the easy answer is no, I'm not. I'm a PA. I'm a physician assistant. And then that's usually the end of the conversation. And they might say like, Oh, really, you're really good. I really like you. And then I say, Well, my schedule is opening up in February, you can be on my schedule. You know, if you want to make an appointment with a doctor, you can. If you want to be on my schedule, you're more than welcome to, I'd be happy to have you on my schedule. So that's generally how it goes. A couple of times when the person looked confused, like they didn't know what a PA was, or what a physician assistant was, or if they just even asked me, like, what is a PA? When I said, No, I'm not a doctor. I'm a PA. What I really would have loved to do is sit down with them for like five, 10 minutes and actually explain what a physician assistant is. You know, your standard interview question, what is a physician assistant? Physician assistants are licensed medical providers that diagnose, formulate treatment plans and prescribe medications and can also help in surgical procedures. We work alongside our physician colleagues in order to provide optimal medical care and expand access to medical care to the greater community. So yeah, I wish I could have said all of that and explained all of that. But if you're practicing or if you have at least a shadow to PA, you know how busy we can get, we don't really have time for all that. So I have just a handful of like really quick things I can say. For instance, my favorite is I have a master's in medicine. I don't have a doctorate. I wasn't trained for as long as the doctor, but we do a lot of the same stuff, have a lot of the same responsibilities. I just work collaboratively with him, mostly under his supervision, at least while I'm a new provider in his practice. And that's just my level of training. I have a master's in medicine, not a doctorate. And a couple of times I've had that explanation, the patient seemed totally satisfied with it. They were happy that I explained it to them, they understood, and they were more than happy to be on my schedule. So it wasn't detrimental in any way. I wasn't trying to like sneak around the fact that I'm not a doctor. I'm a PA. I'm very upfront. I'm very honest about it. And I'm very proud to be a PA. And I communicate that to the patients. So that's the easy answer to the question, are you a doctor? No, look at that knife hand. That's courtesy of the United States Navy. No, no, I'm not a doctor. No, I'm not. I'm a PA. Now the harder question to answer is, what is a doctor? Is it somebody who went to medical school and provides medical care? Like, yeah, absolutely. But you can also get a doctorate in like education, music, music theory, music performance. Why are all my examples having to do with music? English, French, Spanish, Russian, you can get a PhD in so many different things, and then you're technically a doctor. So okay, there's lots of different ways to become what's called a doctor. But let me ask you this, if you get into a car accident, and you have chest pain, and you're having trouble breathing, and you have all the signs and symptoms of a pneumothorax, who would you rather help you out on the side of the road and try to put in a chest tube to save your life? Would you rather have someone who's not a doctor, like me, who's a physician assistant, and has at least seen chest tubes put in and knows exactly where to put it and why and how the whole thing works, and the reason I'm putting it in and all of that? Even though I wasn't trained to do so as much as like an emergency room physician, but still I was trained to do it at least to some degree. So would you rather have me do it? Or would you rather have like a doctor who's got a PhD in music performance, focusing on vocal performance? So the dude's like sitting there on the side of the road as you're dying trying to sing you a song to make you feel better, and then I, not a doctor, am actually putting in the chest tube and trying to save your life physically. So I guess my point is what is a doctor? And I think my answer to that is the definition of what is a doctor is really changing in today's world. Of course, the MD or DO, the top of the line medical provider, the person who's going to be your supervising physician, wherever you work, yeah, of course that is indisputably a doctor. And that's what most people think of when they think of a doctor. And I haven't like done a survey, but I think if you ask the average person, what does a doctor do, they would tell you, oh, they treat me medically, they prescribe my medication, they take care of me when I'm sick, they do my surgeries, things like that. So it's all stuff that physician assistants actually do. And a lot of people don't have an MD or a DO as their primary care provider. A lot of people have a physician assistant or a nurse practitioner. So does that make us not your family doctor? No, we're not doctors, but aren't we your family doctor? Because we're your primary care provider, we refer you to all your specialists, we prescribe your medications, at least most of them, we manage your blood pressure, blood sugar issues, all the basic care that you get is done by us. So are we not technically your family doctor, or are we at least not providing that role? I think that we are. So we shouldn't be called a doctor because we're not, but that is kind of the job that we have, if that makes sense. So that's kind of why when I get the question, are you a doctor? Of course I answer honestly, no, I'm a PA. And then maybe I'll explain what a PA is if there's some time to do that. But that's also why if like a little old lady that's used to the person prescribing their medications and seeing them for their primary care being a doctor on her way out of the office says, oh, thank you, Dr. Boris, or thank you, Dr. Temkin, even though I'm not a doctor, I'm not Dr. Boris, I'm not Dr. Temkin, I'm Boris Temkin, P-A-C, that's my title. But if that's what she's used to doing, and she's like leaving the office, I'm not going to chase after her into the parking lot and be like, hey, no, I'm not a doctor, I'm not, who's going to do that? If that's what makes her comfortable, I don't care, you can do that, like that's the role that I have in her life. It doesn't bother me. That kind of thing might actually bother some doctors who spent like 10 years longer than me in training and sacrifice a lot more time and money and learned a lot more things and know a lot more things, like they have a just higher caliber of understanding of medicine and they're just a higher caliber provider. Yeah, I can see why they would be like, hey, look, dude, you're not a doctor, you didn't go through the training, stop calling yourself that. That's why I never call myself that. But if someone just says it like off the cuff, oh, bye, Dr. Boris, unless I have some time and I really feel like educating them on what a P-A is, I might just wave and be like, we'll see in three months, you know? So yeah, it's like, it's a big controversial thing now, especially online where everything's controversial and in the real world, it kind of isn't as much. But like there is a controversy that some physician groups think that PAs and nurse practitioners are trying to do like a power grab and trying to be more independent and basically try to like cut over into the doctor's turf and like call ourselves doctors and say that we basically are the same thing. And I think no, we're not and we never will be and people who are PAs and NPs should definitely not think of themselves as a doctor. We don't know what we don't know. We do a very similar job and we do a lot of the same stuff, but no, we're not doctors. So I can definitely empathize with how those physicians feel that like these new people with only two years of training are trying to say that they have the same amount of training as us as physicians. Yeah, I can see how that would be pretty annoying and also kind of unsafe for the patient if it's a patient that should be handled by someone with that much training like an actual doctor or if it's somebody that I could handle as a PA. There's a lot of nuance to this nowadays and it just it's a growing field and there's just a lot of stuff like that going on. So I can definitely see that argument, but that's not to say that PAs and NPs shouldn't exist and that we're not doing incredibly good work and that we provide very high level of care and that we're expanding that level of care to more and more people because we're easier to hire, we're easier to train and we don't cost as much because of our training. There's just not as much of it so we don't have to demand as much money as a physician. So just in terms of expanding access to quality healthcare is an amazing thing about physician assistants and nurse practitioners. So anyway, hopefully that was coherent, hopefully that was understandable, but that was just my impression and my opinions on the whole are you a doctor thing and then the differences between physician assistants and nurse practitioners and then like MDs and DOs and there is a very big difference. So I just wanted to kind of get that out there, talk about it for a minute and hopefully that was helpful to some of you. I'll see you in the next video.