I have a few questions about Surgical Physician Assistants?
Discount Medical Scrubs
Can anyone answer me some of the following? My friend really wants to become a Surgical Physician but no one is giving her straight up information about it.
1. What exactly are their roles and duties, she heard they are called scrubs and wants to know exactly what they are expected to do.
2. Requirements, like college training, medical training etc.
3. Annual Salary, she heard it was only ,000-37,000 a year is this true? If not what would they generally make?
4. Advancement opportunities? Does a Surgical Physician or Scrub advance at all in pay grade or position in a hospital?
5. And lastly if you happen to know anywhere in the Northwest America where there would be a good school to get training.
Tags: advancement opportunities, annual salary, discount medical scrubs, medical training, northwest america, surgical physician
October 21st, 2010 at 4:07 am
You seem to be a bit confused about Physicians Assistants vs. Surgical Technician ("Scrub Tech")
A physicians assistant needs to be a college graduate. I think most PA programs are Masters studies (you finish college, then go another 2 years). PA’s make $35-90k per year, depending on the type of work they do.
PA’s practice medicine under the supervision of a doctor. There are limits on what they can do, but they can do quite a lot!
Scrub techs go through a 2 year associates degree program, but I think there are hospitals that will train techs. It helps to have the degree, though. Because the training involved is far less, scrub techs make a lot less than PA’s, about $28-38,000/yr.
Scrubs assist in the operating room, mainly handing instruments to the surgeon, but they can also hold retractors, suture, and assist in other ways.
Here are the websites for the professional associations for both:
http://www.aapa.org/
http://www.ast.org/
They should be able to help you with your other questions.
Good luck!