Studying to be a PA takes a fraction of the time that learning to be a doctor would take. Your PA course will be done in two years, consisting of intense patient exposure from the outset. Contrast this to a typical medical degree, that might consist of five years of tuition with an additional year to study an intercalated degree. If your goal is early patient exposure, with a singular focus on core medical conditions, and then the opportunity to graduate and move out into the healthcare workforce as soon as possible, then this is the role for you. You will avoid a large part of the detailed underpinning that comes as part of a Medicine degree (be it pharmacology or microbiology, genetics or global health) and trade this instead for clinical sciences. It could be considered an alternative route into medicine for those that are more practically focused.Â