Questions to Ask a PA (Physician Assistant)
57 questions to ask a PA, for anyone weighing the physician assistant career who has a short conversation with someone doing the job: a PA you shadowed, a family friend, a graduate of a program you like. They run from the job day to day through scope and role, getting in, PA school and the career afterwards, and end with what to do next. If you are interviewing a physician assistant for a class assignment or a pre-PA club, the list doubles as your script, and the closing group asks what may go in the write-up. Under each question is a short note: what a full answer tends to include, a follow-up to try, or a fact to check for your own state or country, since scope and licensing are not the same everywhere.
The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
The job
What made you decide to become a PA?
Why ask it
The story usually has a turning point in it: a PA who treated them, a job as a medical assistant or EMT, a sum about how long training takes. Notice whether the reason was about the work or about the timeline, then check which of the two is doing more of the talking in your own plans.
What does a typical day look like for you: how many patients, and how much charting?
Why ask it
The patient count and the note-writing describe the job more honestly than the title does. Ask whether charting gets finished during clinic hours or at the kitchen table, because that decides when the day really ends.
What do you like most about being a PA?
Why ask it
A comfortable one to open with. 'Helping people' describes any clinical job, so wait for the specific version: the mix of cases, time with patients, being part of a team. Those are things you can look for yourself on a shadowing day.
What part of the job do you like least?
Why ask it
Asked straight after the last one, it gets an honest pair. Documentation, insurance approvals and the pace come up often, and no description of the profession mentions them. Find out whether the complaint belongs to this employer or would follow them to any PA job.
What do you wish you had known before you became a PA?
Why ask it
People tend to have an answer ready, and often it is not about medicine at all: the paperwork, how much the employer shapes the job, how long before they felt sure of themselves. Whatever they name, ask when they found out, since that is roughly when you would too.
What specialty are you in, and how did you end up in it?
Why ask it
Much of the answer is usually chance: a rotation, a job opening, one mentor. That is reassuring if you are worried about having to pick a field before you apply, and it tells you which of their other answers describe the specialty and not the profession.
How long have you been a PA, and what settings have you worked in?
Why ask it
Basic, and easy to forget until you are writing the interview up. It also dates the rest of what they say: someone two years out remembers applying in detail, and someone twenty years in has watched the role change. Ask about settings as well as years, because hospital, clinic and urgent care make for different jobs.
What is your schedule like: shifts, weekends, call?
Why ask it
Nights and call come from the specialty and the employer, not from the credential, so one PA's answer is one job's answer. Then ask how far ahead the schedule comes out, because that decides whether the rest of life can be planned.
Who do you work alongside every day, and how is the work divided?
Why ask it
A PA's day depends heavily on the medical assistants, nurses, physicians and front desk around them. If they room their own patients and return their own calls, staffing is probably thin, and that changes what the same patient load feels like.
Which conversation with patients never gets easier?
Why ask it
Each specialty has one that repeats: bad news, a prescription they will not write, a result with no clear answer. Hearing which one belongs to theirs lets you picture having it yourself every week.
What is your work-life balance really like, and what protects it?
Why ask it
Asking what protects it gets a method and not just a verdict: notes closed before leaving, a hard stop on messages, a schedule with real days off. If nothing protects it, find out whether the cause is the specialty, the employer or their own habits.
What do the best PAs you have worked with do differently?
Why ask it
Praising a colleague is easier than describing yourself, so this gets a truer picture of good practice. The traits tend to be unglamorous: knowing when to ask, chasing results, being straight with patients about uncertainty. You can start practicing most of them in whatever patient care job you hold now.
What kind of person would you talk out of becoming a PA?
Why ask it
Blunter than asking who succeeds, and it gets named traits: someone who needs certainty, hates being interrupted, or wants the final say from the first year. Hold each one up against yourself before deciding it does not apply.
Scope and role
What are you allowed to do on your own: diagnose, prescribe, order tests, do procedures?
Why ask it
Start the scope questions here, since the answer frames the rest. Have them describe their own week instead of the legal definition: which visits they close out alone, what they can prescribe, which procedures are theirs. None of this is uniform across states or countries, so do not carry the answer over to where you plan to work.
How much autonomy do you have day to day, and how close by is your supervising physician?
Why ask it
What the regulations say about supervision and what happens on a Tuesday afternoon are often different things, and some places call the arrangement collaboration instead. Whether the physician is down the hall, across town or reachable only by text tells you how much weight sits on the PA alone.
What is your working relationship with the physicians like, and how was the trust built?
Why ask it
Law and employer policy fix the formal arrangement, but the relationship is built case by case. Listen for how it changed between the first month and now, and for what the physician needed to see before stepping back.
Is there anything you were trained to do that your state or employer does not allow?
Why ask it
Scope is set at several levels at once: the law where they practice, the hospital's or practice's own rules, and what a particular physician is comfortable with. The gap between training and permission frustrates some PAs and barely touches others, depending on the job.
What do you do when a patient's problem is beyond what you are comfortable handling?
Why ask it
A good answer is a routine, not a confession: who they call, how quickly that person responds, and how they explain the handoff to the patient. If it turns out that nobody is reachable, you have learned something about that workplace, not about PAs in general.
Where you work, what is the real difference between a PA and a nurse practitioner?
Why ask it
Keep it to their workplace. The training routes differ, but on the floor the two roles can overlap almost completely in one clinic and be divided quite differently in the next. If you are choosing between the two paths, ask which one their employer hires more of, and why.
Does your employer cover your malpractice insurance, and what happens to it if you leave?
Why ask it
Applicants rarely think about this, and it changes what a job offer is worth. Policies differ on whether past work stays covered after someone moves on, and a working PA can tell you how theirs is set up. Treat it as one person's arrangement, not as insurance advice.
How has the role changed since you qualified, and where do you think it is heading?
Why ask it
Titles, supervision rules and scope have shifted in various places in recent years. Someone in practice knows which of those reached their own clinic and which were mostly announcements. The forecast is only an opinion, but it concerns the decade you would be working in.
What happens when a patient asks to see the doctor instead of you?
Why ask it
It happens, and the answer shows how settled they are in the role. It also shows whether the practice backs its PAs or quietly hands the patient over.
What do patients and other clinicians most often get wrong about PAs?
Why ask it
Common answers are that a PA is a doctor in training, or an assistant in the secretarial sense. How they correct it, and how often they have to, tells you how much explaining comes with the title. It is also practice for the day your own relatives ask.
Do you call yourself a physician assistant or a physician associate, and does it matter where you work?
Why ask it
The profession's name has been under debate in more than one country, and what can legally go on a badge depends on where someone practices. You are asking partly for the local rule and partly for their view. Confirm the current position with the licensing body where you plan to work.
Getting in
Did you consider medical school or the nurse practitioner route, and what decided it?
Why ask it
This is the comparison many applicants are quietly making. Their reasons were their own: years of training, debt, a family, how much final responsibility they wanted. Write down which of those you share, and ask whether any of them looks different to them now.
What did you study and do before PA school, and would that background still get someone in now?
Why ask it
Prerequisite courses and patient care requirements are set by each program and get revised. Someone who qualified fifteen years ago may be describing a path that has since closed, which is why the question ends on now.
How much patient care experience did you have before applying, and what counted?
Why ask it
Hours are not all weighed alike: a role one program counts in full another may discount. Ask which of their own hours the admissions committees seemed to take seriously, then read the current definitions at the programs on your list.
What did the application process involve, and what do you think got you in?
Why ask it
Push for particulars: what took longest, which part they believe carried the application, what they would skip a second time. 'Be well-rounded' is what everyone says, and it does not help you choose what to do this year.
How many programs did you apply to, and how did you choose them?
Why ask it
The reasoning is worth more than the count: location, cost, a mission that matched their background, requirements they already met. Every extra program adds fees and essays, so ask whether they would apply to more or fewer if they did it again.
Who wrote your letters of recommendation, and how did you ask them?
Why ask it
Programs differ on whether they want a letter from a PA, a physician, a professor or a work supervisor, so read each program's current requirements. What this person can add is the practical side: how long they had known each writer, and how many weeks ahead they asked.
What did your PA school interviews ask that you did not expect?
Why ask it
Interview formats change, so treat the exact questions as history. The durable part is what caught them out, which is often an ethics scenario, a question about the limits of the role, or being asked to explain a weak grade.
Did you get in on your first application cycle, and what changed if you applied again?
Why ask it
Applying more than once is common enough that many PAs will say so plainly. The detail to collect is what they altered between cycles: more hours, a different list of programs, a rewritten statement. If the subject seems sore, let it go.
PA school
Where did you go to PA school, and would you pick that program again?
Why ask it
A graduate will say things about a program that its website will not: how rotations were arranged, whether faculty stayed, how prepared the class felt for the exam. Programs change after people leave, so put a date on the answer and check it against students who are there now.
What was PA school like week to week?
Why ask it
Ask for a real week: hours in class, how often exams came, whether anyone in the class held a job. That level of detail is what tells you whether the course would fit around the commitments you already have.
Which part of PA school was hardest for you: the volume, the exams or the clinical year?
Why ask it
People split on this, and the split tracks how they learn. Someone who struggled with the volume and someone who struggled with a difficult preceptor are warning you about different things, so work out which of them sounds more like you.
Roughly what did PA school cost, and how long are people from your class taking to pay it off?
Why ask it
Framing it around their class keeps the question comfortable, and they can still give their own figure if they want to. Tuition has moved since they enrolled, so use the answer for the shape of repayment and get current costs from the programs.
How did clinical rotations work, and did one of them change your plans?
Why ask it
Get the mechanics first: who arranged the sites, how far away they were, how long each one ran. The second half tends to produce a story, about a preceptor or a field they had never considered, and it teaches more than the list of sites.
How did you prepare for the certifying exam, and when did you start?
Why ask it
In the United States that exam is the PANCE, taken after graduation, and other countries have their own arrangements. Find out what the program built in, what they added themselves, and how long they left between graduating and sitting it. Study resources date quickly, so the timeline is worth more than the book list.
What did you have to learn on the job that school never covered?
Why ask it
Billing codes, insurance denials, the electronic record, how to run fifteen minutes behind without showing it. The list is a preview of the first year of work, and some of it can be picked up early in a scribe or medical assistant role.
Career
How did you find your first job, and how long did it take?
Why ask it
Admissions are documented in detail and this part hardly at all. Ask whether the offer came through a rotation, how long the search ran, and whether they would take that same first job again knowing what it turned into.
What did the first six months of practicing feel like?
Why ask it
A general warning about a steep learning curve does not stick, and one person's account of their first months does. Ask who they could take a question to at the time, and when they stopped double-checking every decision.
What should a new graduate look for in a first contract?
Why ask it
They are not a lawyer, and contract terms depend on the state and the employer, so take this as experience and have any real offer reviewed. A working PA can still tell you which clauses turned out to matter to them: how long onboarding lasted, the non-compete, the notice period.
What is the job market like for new PAs in your area and specialty?
Why ask it
National projections say little about one city. A working PA knows whether their own employer is hiring new graduates, how many applicants a posting draws, and whether the openings are in the specialties people want or in the ones nobody stays in.
How does your pay compare with what you expected when you applied?
Why ask it
People answer this more readily than 'what do you make', and it brings out what a number leaves out: call requirements, productivity targets, whether raises came from experience or from changing employers. For the figures themselves, look up a current salary survey for your region.
What do you have to do to keep your certification?
Why ask it
Continuing education, recertification and license renewals cost both money and time, and employers differ on how much of it they pay for. The requirements come from the certifying body and the licensing board where they work, so look up the current cycle yourself.
How easily can a PA change specialty, and have you done it?
Why ask it
Being able to switch fields without going back to school is one of the reasons people give for choosing PA. If they have done it, ask who trained them in the new field and whether the pay started over. If they have not, ask what stopped them.
Did you consider a postgraduate residency or fellowship, and are they valued in your specialty?
Why ask it
Optional postgraduate programs exist in a number of specialties, often around a year of structured training at lower pay than a staff job. Opinions on them are divided. A PA in the field can say whether employers there count one as an advantage or simply train new graduates themselves.
How portable is this career if I move to another state or country?
Why ask it
Licenses are issued state by state in the United States, and other countries recognize the profession differently or not at all. If a move is likely for you, ask whether they know anyone who has made one, then confirm the rules with the licensing body in the place you would go.
Is there a ceiling in this career, and what does the top of it look like?
Why ask it
Awkward to ask, and better asked before you commit than after. Answers usually involve a lead PA role, teaching, administration or a move into industry. Notice whether they describe those as places they want to go or as ways out of clinic.
If you were starting over, would you become a PA again?
Why ask it
Most people who like their work still attach a condition: a different specialty, a different first employer, less debt. Collect those, because they are choices still open to you. If medical school comes up as the road not taken, ask what they think it would have cost them.
Next steps
What advice would you give someone who wants to become a PA?
Why ask it
Left open, this gets 'work hard and get your hours'. Say where you are first: still deciding, collecting patient care hours, or applying this cycle. Advice aimed at your actual position is worth far more than advice for applicants in general.
If I wanted to test whether this is right for me, what would you have me do?
Why ask it
Where the advice question gets principles, this one gets a task: a setting to work in, an entry-level job that builds patient care hours, a particular volunteer role. Leave with one thing you can start this month.
Could I shadow you for a day, or is there someone here who takes students?
Why ask it
Many programs want to see shadowing hours, and they are hard to arrange cold. Clinics and hospitals often have their own rules about observers, including paperwork and privacy training, so a no may be policy and not a judgment of you. Find out who handles those requests.
Is there anything I have not asked about that you think I should have?
Why ask it
The usual last question of an interview, and it tends to bring up whatever they care about most: burnout among colleagues, a change in local hiring, an argument inside the profession. The first reply is often 'I think we covered it', so wait a few seconds before moving on.
If I write this up for a class or mention it in an application, is there anything you want left out or shown to you first?
Why ask it
For when the conversation is an interview for an assignment, a club newsletter or a personal statement. People say things about an employer or a supervising physician that they would not want quoted, and nothing that could identify a patient belongs in what you hand in. Offering to send them the lines you plan to use costs you one email.
May I get back in touch if questions come up while I am applying?
Why ask it
Few people say no to this at the end of a good conversation, so the value is in how you use it. One specific question a few months on is easy to answer, and a long list is easy to put off.
Who else should I talk to?
Why ask it
Ask for someone unlike them: a different specialty, a newer graduate, a PA who left clinical work. Then ask whether they would introduce you, because a note that arrives with their name on it tends to get read.
Talking to a PA About the Career
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Setting up the conversation
Say what you want and how long it will take
Ask for twenty minutes and name one clear purpose, such as deciding whether to apply next cycle. That is easy to say yes to. An open-ended request to pick someone's brain is harder, because the person cannot tell what they are agreeing to.
If you are interviewing a physician assistant for an assignment
Say so in the first message, along with who will read the result. Ask before recording, or take notes by hand, and get the plain facts down early: how long they have practiced, their specialty and the setting. Show them any line you plan to quote by name before you hand it in.
Choose a few from each group
The list is longer than any one conversation. For a short meeting, pick eight to ten: the first five, the scope questions that matter where you live, and whichever group matches the stage you are at. An applicant needs the getting-in questions, and someone still deciding can skip them.
Ask a working PA about work, not about admissions
Programs set admissions criteria and change them regularly. A PA five years out is an authority on the job and a historian on getting in. Confirm current prerequisites with the programs themselves.
Look up the published facts first
Certification bodies, state licensing boards and program directories publish requirements, costs and pass rates. Reading them beforehand means you spend the conversation on judgment instead of on figures.
What only a working PA can tell you
- How supervision feels day to day, as opposed to how it is written in the regulations.
- What the first year was actually like, and what support existed during it.
- What the documentation load does to a working week.
- Which part of the job they like least, and whether it comes from the employer or from the profession.
- Whether the pay matched the expectation, and how it moved over time.
- How trust with a supervising physician was built, and how long that took.
- Whether employers near them are hiring new graduates, and in which specialties.
Common pitfalls
Asking whether you should become a PA
Nobody can answer that for you, and being asked puts a near-stranger in an awkward position. Ask what the work is like and who they would talk out of it, then make the call yourself.
Generalizing from one person
Specialty, employer, state and the decade someone trained in all change the answer. Two shorter conversations in different settings are worth more than one long conversation in one.
Treating salary figures as fixed
Pay varies by setting and region and moves across a career. Ask about structure and trajectory rather than trying to pin down a single number.
Only asking about the good parts
The useful material is in what they would change, what tires them, and what they did not expect. Little of it gets volunteered, so those questions have to be asked directly.
After the conversation
- 1Write down anything you were told that can be checked, and check it before planning around it.
- 2Mark which claims were specific to their program, state or employer rather than to the profession.
- 3Do the concrete next step they suggested, however small, before asking anyone else for time.
- 4Ask for the introduction they offered while the conversation is still recent enough to reference.
- 5Send a short note saying what you did with the advice. That is what turns one conversation into a contact.