 So I think there are like four major areas that you should kind of be aware of when thinking about the differences between a PA and an MD. Well, so if you guys did not welcome back to my channel for those of you new, take a look around. If you like what you see, go ahead and subscribe. So I had a question post to me and I've had this question post to me like on several occasions, but when I recently went to the NIH community college health fair thing that they do annually, a lot of people were like, well, what's the difference between a PA and an MD? So that is what this video is going to address. It's important to just kind of understand those roles and what we do in those various different roles. So I think there are like four major areas that you should kind of be aware of when thinking about the differences between a PA and an MD and the initial area is obviously your education and your costs of that education. So on average, PA school is about two years. It can be longer, it can be three years, it can be five, it can be six years depending on if you're going into a direct entry PA program or if you're going into a dual degree PA program, which is like your MPH, so your master's in public health and then your MPAM or physician MPAS, it varies, but your master's in physician assistant medicine or studies and then your master's in public health will give you a three-year program as opposed to the typical two-year program that most schools do. When it comes to med school, obviously you're going to school for four years and then from that you're going to have a residency. So you get more specialized training for the particular specialty that you want to go into and then after you go through residency and you become a fellow and such then you'll become an attending and you'll be a full-blown physician practicing autonomously. So the PA aspect is you're going to school for an average of two years, you come out and you're practicing right out of school. Your typical kind of things that they're focusing on for PA school initially is you have a lot of clinical hours, you have to have a strong GPA. So 3.5 or above is typical like the average of most PA students, but it's the average. So there are students with lower GPAs and obviously higher GPAs, but 3.5 and above is typically what you'll see and very, very heavy clinical experience. Whereas med school, it's not so much on the clinical experience but more so on the grade. So you're going to have like an average of like 3.7 as your GPA, your overall GPA and like maybe like a 3.6 for your science GPA. So those are like the key differences with respect to your initial education. Now the cost of that education is also different in that as PA's you will when you're going into PA school which is grad school you're going to pay on average anywhere from a range of like 50,000 to about 110,000 for the two-year degree and that obviously varies from in-state to out-of-state. Those different tuition will vary in price and cost and also the type of school. So if it's a community college versus a four-year college that also kind of affects the price. Now with respect to med school you're doing four years like I said before, but for those four years you're incurring a debt of about 200, that's what I said 200,000 to about 300,000. So just understanding the cost with the various different programs is important as well. So I think that's the main one of the main differences between a PA and an MD. As far as our roles and duties, I kind of delineated that before but I think that that's like the second main difference between a PA and an MD. So obviously, like I said, when you're in the ED, if you're going through the fast track, like you know kind of more acute things, not really a severe MBA, you're going to see the PA on that fast track realm. There's usually one PA or two PA's in a physician or one PA in a physician. So you'll see them on that fast track but things like you know CVAs or subarachnoid hemorrhages or PEs, although they may come into the fast track, if they are, if it's like a high suspicion that this is something like super nefarious then you'll go to main side and that's where you will see like you know you'll see like some PAs are over on main side as well. You'll see the residents but you'll mainly see physicians over there. So the physician is the one that's taking on the more like harder cases I guess you could say and I mean that's no slight to the PA profession. I know there are lots of PAs that feel like hey I can manage a second hand of that and that and you know that's absolutely like true that some of them can but typically the harder the case the physician is the one who's handling that. Also when you're coming to like another specialty in terms of surgery PAs do not perform surgery they assist in surgery so although we can do like simple lack repairs and things of that nature suturing, ironing and we gain those skills in PA school when it comes to being a surgical PA be it a general surgery PA or you know one of the other subspecialties like neurology or vascular you're not performing the surgery you're not the one directing the show in this you are assisting in that and so that is another like major importance and difference with respect to the PA and the MD profession. I think another difference that a lot of people kind of take into consideration as well is compensation so obviously as PAs like your general starting salary is about $100,000 and up so here make there I've seen PAs I make $200,000 and a little bit more and you know they are like the anomaly or sometimes they're just like working their behinds off and that's okay so there is an option to make more money in the profession depending on how hard how hard you want to work but as an MD you're making anywhere from $200,000 and up initially in your starting role and I did a video on the various different salaries for these PAs and so if you want to see like the jobs that make more money if that's the thing that you're interested in then you should kind of just look in my search bar and type that in but obviously you know different specialties give you more money be it for the PA profession or the MD profession but physicians do make more money than PAs I mean and they deserve to they've gone to school longer they've had more training and so it is what it is and they like the last major difference between a PA and an MD is the flexibility and the autonomy so as PAs in many states we still are working in collaboration with our attending physician um and you will have a delegation agreement with them and so there is like a supervisory role that the physician pays now they're not like placed they're not like hovering over your back making sure that you check all these boxes obviously but they are there should you need uh any guidance or assistance in anything because we don't know it all and so you're there to talk to your attending physician and you know collaborate and and see hey like I haven't seen this before or I'm not used to this can you um give me your take on this this patient and that is fine and so that's what PAs uh typically like that's our general role right but when it comes to the MDs they don't usually have any of those stipulations or delegations agreements on their license they can practice autonomously with no oversight at all and they can also obviously own their own practices and things like that now PAs can own practices but there are some like loopholes and things that you have to kind of jump through and go around to make sure that you own your own practice uh and like how much percentage of that practice you have to own and those are things that you can look into um at your various different state level but typically MDs don't have any type of oversight when it comes to things like that I mean PAs do and so if these are things that you really want um to have like you you know you want to have the autonomy and you want to make uh you know 300 plus thousand dollars a year and um you want to get in debt for 300 thousand dollars no but I mean these are the the various different things that I've talked about then you know it's important to understand like okay well maybe I want to be a physician as opposed to a PA but those are the main differences although we do function um similarly in many areas there are areas that you know your role is specifically designated and understanding your role uh is important in any profession because you don't want to step outside of those boundaries so thank you so much for asking me that question um I hope I did a good job answering it for you if you have any other questions regard to that particular question or any question in general go ahead and leave them in comment section below thank you guys so much for watching follow me on instagram at it on the pa and I will talk to you guys next time