honestly 3 years out is still super early, you didn’t box yourself in at all. sell the procedures, comfort with needles, talking people through painful stuff, time management and running your own schedule. em and hosp both like folks who can be fast and independent. be ready to own the “i miss real medicine” narrative in interviews so it doesn’t sound like you’re just bored with aesthetics. and yeah, even as a PA it’s weirdly hard to move around now, hiring seems way messier than it should be
3
u/foreverand2025
I’ve always done traditional medicine but hope this is helpful:
How did you market yourself coming from a non-traditional or niche field?
Focus on the traditional medicine aspects you are doing. You are doing procedure. You are working with patients, writing notes, etc.
• What skills would you emphasize from a procedural/aesthetic background that translate well to EM or inpatient medicine?
See above.
• Are there certain specialties that tend to be more open to PAs making a pivot like this early in their career?
Medicine in general is so understaffed that most places are open to training you if you have a decent personality and are willing to learn. Apply broadly and to jobs that look like good gigs and interest you.
• Anything you wish you had done differently when making the switch?
I’ve jumped around specialties my whole life. Just wrote another reply about this but we don’t really get pigeonholed. PAs are lifelong learners and by design meant to be flexible to fill gaps where needed. Find a doctor and/or group of seasoned PAs willing to train you, read from good sources on your own, etc. My general advice to people is pick a job based on pay, schedule, work culture, etc and weigh those things more heavily than specialty itself. I’ve been doing this over a decade now and believe that the specialty (unless you really hate or love it) falls quite a bit lower on the priority list than most people think. That said and with all due respect I’d 100% walk away from any kind of aesthetic/naturalist/etc type work. I’m not here to slam anyone and to each their own but especially as a newer PA I would strongly encourage you to stay in traditional medicine and look at aesthetic or whatever type work more of a field to go into once you’re truly seasoned and to do so just for pay/hours type reasons. Just my opinion.
2
u/Ok_Glass_7213
No advice but would love an update on this and how it goes!