Pay to Learn More or Get Paid to Learn More: Physician Assistant Residency and Salary
I recently wrote a post for the PA Platform on the pros and cons of Physician Assstant residency. There are good reasons to do a residency but today we are going to look at the pay and how that affects PAs. Doing a PA residency can be beneficial in helping you learn more, however it’s going to be at the sacrifice of your salary. If you’re willing to take a pay cut for your first job and you want more training, then PA residency might be an option for you.
When I graduated from PA school the average reported starting salary for PAs was around $85,000. Most of the residencies I had looked into were giving stipends in the range of $40,000. That’s less than half of what the average PA was making. I ended up getting a job in general surgery and was making $105,000 right out of PA school. No residency required.
Some residencies have seen the huge pay gap for starting PAs and have worked to lessen that gap. According to the most recent salary surveys PA salaries are now in the low $100,000 range. I spoke to a representative of a residency program at the AAPA conference this past spring who stated that they were offering a stipend of $75,000; a vast improvement from the $40,000 I’ve previously seen but still a far cry from what you would make in a non-residency position.
Doing a residency probably is not going to help you have a higher income once you’re done. Once you’re done with a PA residency you’ll still have to look for a regular PA position. You might have some additional experience, but your salary is still going to be based on someone with one year of experience or possibly even for a new graduate.
Most organizations are going to look for ways to pay you less if they can and will still categorize you as a new grad. You might have a slight edge at getting a job compared to a new grad without any experience but really once you get to an interview it is more about personality then your experience and residency training. If you’re hoping that a residency is going to help you earn more once you’re done don’t be surprised when you get offered a new graduate salary.
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Salary is more about how well you can negotiate than your experience in residency or other jobs. If you want to have a higher salary I’d recommend working on your negotiation skills more than doing a residency. In undergrad I was a business minor and one book that was required for one of my classes was Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People. It is an easy read and helpful guide to negotiation strategies and worth a read if you want advice on improving your negotiation skills.
The big selling point on residencies is more training and learning a specialty. However, there are other jobs out there where you can still learn. The practice I am currently at is a multi-specialty private practice with nine different clinic sites in the area, and a large portion of providers in primary care. We have a training program for new PAs and NPs where they rotate through all the specialties and then are assigned to a clinic. This program is great for new graduates who may want more training prior to being out on their own; and you’ll be working for a regular salary and not a half salary of a residency.
At my first job out of school I worked in general surgery. I was a satellite hospital and the main hospital had a DO residency program. We were invited to attend the education events, journal club, tumor board etc. No matter what, the first year of being a PA is going to be a lot of learning and if you’re not in a residency you need to seek out other options to learn more. Again, there are ways to learn without having to take the lesser pay of a residency.
Doing a residency is a personal choice and can help you learn new skills and gain experience but it does affect the rest of PAs. PAs that are in residencies still have to be licensed and certified. They are still PAs and when you look at PA salaries the salary of a PA resident is included. If a certified PA in a residency is paid $40,000 that will lower the average of all PAs in the salary survey. There are a limited amount of PAs in residency but that still affects the numbers.
There are a few benefits of doing a residency but the pay is not one of them. It can help you gain invaluable experience but is not necessary if you want to find a job with a great salary and by doing a residency it can lower the average salary of PAs. If you’re worried about paying off your student loans then a residency is probably not going to help with this. If you want more experience and training without taking a huge cut in salary you just have to find the right position that is going to foster a learning environment.
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Residency training is not the same as on the job training. As a resident your job is to learn. As an employee your job is to move patients. Residents rotate on other services learning the finer points of central line placement, ultrasound, intubation, etc. Someone could work at a PA job for 20 years and never be given the option to acquire these skills. Physicians are teaching much less in 2017 than they did at any time in the past. They are now often also employees themselves and have quotas to meet so they would rather do the advanced procedure themselves in 5 minutes than spend 30 minutes teaching a PA how to do it. Residencies often lead to BETTER jobs than new grads or those with a single year of experience can get. Only those who have done them are in a position to state the impact they have had on their careers. I know many folks who have completed residencies in many fields and not a single one ever told me they regretted their choice.
thanks so much for the comment and the perspective on residency training for PAs. The purpose of the article was not to say residencies are bad it was more to bring to light the financial downside of doing a residency. If anything I think residencies should provide a higher stipend for PAs and that would probably attract more people to do them. As far as training on the job it is very position dependent and hard to know how much extra training you’ll get but there are definitely opportunities to learn on the job and not have to take a half salary.