Flexible PA Profession Excels in National Rankings

Each year, U.S. News & World Report lists the best jobs in the United States based on a unique methodology, considering factors like salary, work-life balance, and job stability. This year, the role of physician assistant/associate (PA) not only ranked high on the periodical’s Best Health Care Jobs (#2) and Best STEM Jobs (#3) but also jumped two spots to achieve third place across all occupations.

Jason Prevelige, DMSc, MBA, PA-C, DFAAPA, president and chair of the board for the American Academy of Physician Associates, said continuing to climb in the United States. News best jobs rankings is a “powerful recognition of the contributions PAs make to healthcare every day and a celebration of their lasting impact on patient care.”

“This honor highlights the PA profession’s continued growth and leadership in expanding access to care and addressing health inequities nationwide. This recognition will surely inspire the PA community to keep pushing boundaries, innovating, and driving progress as leaders in healthcare,” he added.

Lisa Walker, MPAS, PA-C, a teaching professor at the MEDEX Northwest PA Program at the University of Washington, Seattle, added that she was not surprised by this year’s ranking — and expects that PAs will continue to be on the list of best jobs for years to come.

“Our profession is still fairly young — PAs have only been around since the mid-1960s,” she said. “But we are the boots on the ground in healthcare. We get into this job because we want to help patients, and as the field has grown, we have a lot of opportunities to do just that.”

The Benefits of Flexibility

While salaries are just one enticing aspect of the profession, Dane Thomas, PA-C, MMS, a hematology/oncology PA at Texas Oncology in Flower Mound, Texas, told Medscape Medical News that “We see that the demand for PAs is only going up — and salaries along with it. It certainly plays a role in PAs being one of the top professions in the country.”

Yet Timothy Thompson, PA-C, MBA, senior director of Clinical Affairs and Professional Development at Catalyst OrthoScience, a medtech company specializing in shoulder arthroplasty, said the overwhelming benefit of any PA career is its inherent flexibility.

“I can practice wherever I want, in whatever specialty I want, when I want — and that’s even if I want to practice at all,” he said. “There are so many different paths PAs can take in their career depending on what they want to do.”

Certainly, there has been no lack of discussion about the advantages of specialty switching in the field. While PAs are trained as generalists — and the field was originally designed to help bolster primary care — PAs have ample opportunity to move into other medical fields. Mike Higbee, PA-C, at NYU/Langone Department of Psychiatry, in Bronx, New York, worked in a dermatology practice for 14 years before switching to psychiatry in 2018.

“I liked dermatology a lot — but I didn’t love it,” he said. “Having the flexibility to pursue what I was most passionate about was a big thing for me.”

But Higbee added that the flexibility built into the PA profession extends far beyond mere specialty. He said there are a wide range of different kinds of jobs, as well as ample room for advancement.

“You can practice. You can go into an administrative position. You can go into research. You can go into speaking,” he said. “There are so many different avenues you can go down as a PA.”

Thompson agreed and said that he appreciates that despite the different roles, he can still make a difference even if he is not directly seeing patients.

“The ability to get into education roles with medical devices, teaching healthcare providers how to use things that will make their patients better, has been really rewarding,” he said. “And at this point, these types of roles make up almost my entire professional career.”

Finally, Higbee said, there is flexibility in when and how often you work — which is a boon as you get older and start a family. He has appreciated that flexibility because he wants to find balance with young kids at home.

“You need different things when you are single versus once you become a family,” he said. “My wife is also a PA, and, as our family has grown, she’s gone from working full-time plus a side job to not working for a couple of years after she had our kids and then going back now to a per diem job. You can reprioritize how you work based on your needs at any given time.”

Advice for Prospective PAs

Despite the flexibility in PA roles, there is still the risk for burnout for PAs and other providers in the healthcare field. To combat those issues, Walker recommended that those considering PA school try to get some type of clinical experience before they enroll.

“That will give you a leg up and make the training easier,” she said.

Thompson said that having the right support, including strong mentors, is also a boon — both as a student and a working PA.

“When you have two or three experienced people who you can call and say, ‘Hey, listen, I’m experiencing this situation; what should I do?’” he recounted. “It’s a big help. They can help you figure out how to make things better before you get to burnout.”

Thomas agreed — and added that it is also important for people considering a career as a PA to always remember their why.

“Any profession has positives and negatives. So, take a deep dive and investigate what PAs do and how the medical system works,” he said. “But, I believe, if you are interested in being a patient advocate, in practicing the kind of medicine that will benefit your patients, you are going to succeed. Then, the good pay, the job stability, and the flexibility of this kind of work just become extra, added benefits.”

Kayt Sukel is a healthcare and science writer based outside Houston.