help! grad entry medicine or physician associate MSc?

currently doing undergrad psychology , but i want to go into something medical now.. stuck in between medical school & physician associate postgrad.

medicine is 4 yrs at entry level & physicians associate is 2 yrs MSc. i know the salary is capped at £50k (band 7) for physician associate which is kind of a con because I can’t progress to higher bands etc.

can anyone give advice or their own personal experience? thanks.

Reply 1

TSR Hippocrates

Hey there, thanks for posting a question in the Medicine forum. :biggrin:

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Official Undergraduate Medicine 2023 Entry
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Reply 2

hippychick17

well, do you actually want to be a doctor?

Physician Associates are a new not-quite-but-just-as-good-as-a-doctor-but-not-actually-a-doctor healthcare worker. the government likes them because they are seen as cheaper to employ and quicker to train… just ask yourself if you want to have three more years of debt to become one of these as it’s very unclear what the long term career progression will be.

If you do want to be a doctor with full qualification then grad medical school is the way (if you can afford it).

If you want to work in healthcare but aren’t bothered about being Dr X, have you considered paramedic, where you work and get paid while achieveing qualification? it is NOT an easy option in the slightest but is clinically fascinating, my friend retrained as a paramedic in his thirties and loved the change.