Your First Job Is Much More Than a Salary

Its graduation season and if you haven’t started looking already the next thing up for new graduates is the job search. After I graduated I had very little money left in my checking account and knew that the bills would start coming in soon so I wanted to start working as soon as I could in order to have my first pay check. There are a lot of opportunities out there for new PA graduates, but it is important to choose a good one coming out of school.

One piece of advice I would give about your first job is that the salary is not always the most important. I know it is tempting to take the job that offers you the most, but really what is more valuable is the experience.

My first job out of PA school was in general surgery. It actually paid fairly well compared to other jobs I had been offered but what I really liked about it was that I was able to see a lot of different disorders and had a varied experience.

I worked in the OR but also saw patients in the office. We had patients that were in the hospital as well so I was able to do get used to doing hospital rounds. It was at a small hospital in Oregon so we saw a lot of different things from the regular general surgeries like appendicitis and cholecystitis; to things like lung resections, vascular surgeries and limb amputations. We did everything from the neck to the toe.

If you know you want to specialize right from the start and you have no interest in ever changing specialties than it’s probably ok to look for jobs in that specialty. If you think you might want to change in the future I think it is better to start in something that is general first and then specialize later on in your career. Once you’re in a specialty it makes it difficult to transition out of that specialty.

When I was ready to change I had a lot of job offers in different specialties because of my general surgery background. Another colleague I recently talked with was working in pain management when his practice closed down. He had worked at the same place for over ten years since graduating from PA school. He had a very difficult time finding a job in another specialty as most of the potential employers felt like his experience was in pain management.

There are some employers that have programs for new graduates. They use these to help recruit new graduates and get them trained. The company I work for does this for any new PA/NP in family practice. They’ll have them rotate through different clinics and work with more seasoned providers for the first couple of months to help them get started.

One option to get more education or training is to do a PA residency or fellowship. I personally think that these are not good for the PA profession overall and think that you can still get good training without having to take a salary that is half of what you could be getting in non-resident positions.

Although you might feel like your education is complete after graduation the road to learning is just starting. It is important to look at your first job as more than just a salary and find a job that is going to give you a well rounded experience. I remember when I was finishing PA school one of my preceptors told me that “your first job will not be your last job”. So, good luck to you all you new graduates looking for your first PA job; and remember that salary is only one component of what you should consider. At this point in your career a well rounded experience with good training can be just as valuable.

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