Questions to Ask a PA When Shadowing
Twenty questions for a day shadowing a physician assistant, aimed at what a program website cannot tell you: how supervision actually works, the charting load, the pace of a clinic day, and how pay is structured.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What are you doing on the computer between patients?
Why ask it
Ask about documentation early, because it is the largest and least visible part of the job. A PA who says charting follows them home is describing a workload that appears in no job posting and no program brochure.
Of the patients we just saw, which was the hardest, and why?
Why ask it
Anchoring to something you both watched gets a far more concrete answer than asking about difficult patients in the abstract. It also shows you were paying attention rather than waiting for your turn to talk.
How much of your day is decided by you, and how much by the schedule?
Why ask it
Autonomy over the schedule varies more between employers than between specialties. The answer tells you what to look for in a first job: appointment length, whether double-booking happens, and who controls the template.
How is the arrangement with your supervising physician set up in practice?
Why ask it
Supervision differs by state and by practice, from formal chart review to a colleague down the hall you rarely need. This single fact shapes a PA's daily experience more than anything else and is invisible from outside.
What can you do here without checking with anyone, and where is the line?
Why ask it
Prescribing, procedures and independent decisions all have limits set partly by law and partly by the practice. Asking where the line falls gets you a working description of scope instead of the textbook version.
What did PA school not prepare you for?
Why ask it
Almost every clinician has an answer and it is usually not clinical: billing, difficult families, the pace, or how much of the work is tolerating uncertainty. For someone deciding whether to apply, this is the most useful question here.
How did you pick this specialty, and how hard would it be to switch?
Why ask it
Specialty mobility is one of the genuine features of the profession. Worth hearing how a switch actually went rather than how easy it is said to be, so ask what it costs in pay and retraining.
What did your patient care hours look like before you applied?
Why ask it
Direct and practical. Requirements shift over time, so hearing what one person's hours actually consisted of, and whether those hours would still count today, beats a general figure from a website.
How much of your job is working out what is not wrong with someone?
Why ask it
Ruling things out is most of primary care and urgent care, and it is invisible to an observer. The answer reframes the work: not spotting the rare diagnosis, but safely excluding it a dozen times a day.
When a patient asks whether you are a doctor, what do you say?
Why ask it
Every PA has been asked and every PA has a refined answer. How they handle it tells you more about the profession's day-to-day standing than any formal discussion of scope of practice would.
What is the hardest conversation you have in a normal week?
Why ask it
Gets a specific scene rather than a category. Answers often involve telling someone they cannot have what they came in for, which is a skill nobody warns applicants they will need.
How do you keep going when a patient does not follow the plan?
Why ask it
Adherence is where clinical work becomes emotionally costly, and it is a common reason clinicians tire of outpatient medicine. Listen for whether they describe a practice for handling it or simply endurance.
How is PA pay structured here, salary, productivity, or both?
Why ask it
Awkward, and worth asking once the day has warmed up. Structure matters as much as the number: production-based pay changes how a clinician feels about a slow afternoon, which is worth knowing before you pick employers.
How many patients do you see in a day, and how long does that leave for each one?
Why ask it
Two numbers that together define the pace. Twenty patients across eight hours is a different job from thirty-five, and the second number tells you how much of a visit is actually available for talking.
What do you do when you are not sure?
Why ask it
The most important question here about clinical judgment. You want the specific move: calling a colleague, bringing the patient back in two days, writing the differential down. Certainty in the reply is the warning sign, not the reassurance.
Is there anything about this job you did not expect to like?
Why ask it
Turns the usual satisfaction question sideways and tends to produce something honest, often about procedures, teaching students, or the ordinary pleasure of seeing the same patients across years.
Would you choose the PA route again, knowing what the other paths involve?
Why ask it
Fair to ask directly, since most PAs weighed the alternatives before applying. The answers usually turn on training length, debt and how much independence they wanted, which is the comparison you are trying to make.
What would you look for in a first job that you did not know to look for?
Why ask it
Asks for hindsight rather than advice, which produces specifics: call schedules, how a supervising physician gets assigned, whether the practice fills its vacancies, and who ends up doing the charting.
Having watched me today, is there anything you would tell me to work on before I apply?
Why ask it
Best asked at the end, and it takes some nerve. A PA who has spent hours with you can usually name something concrete, and your willingness to hear it is part of what they will remember about you.
Would you be willing to answer questions later, or to be a reference?
Why ask it
Ask before you leave rather than by email months on. Shadowing contacts fade quickly, and a specific request made in person is far more likely to get a yes than a message in the spring.
Making a Shadowing Day Count
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before the day
Settle the logistics in advance
Ask what to wear, when to arrive, where to park, whether you need a badge, and whether the practice wants immunization records or a signed confidentiality form. Arriving unable to get into the building costs the PA their day, not just yours.
Ask what the day actually contains
Clinic, operating room, rounds and procedure days show you completely different versions of the job. If you can only shadow once, ask for the day that most resembles ordinary work rather than the most dramatic one.
Bring six questions, not twenty
You will get gaps of two or three minutes, not an interview. Six questions you genuinely care about, asked when there is room, produce far more than a list you try to work through.
During the day
- Introduce yourself or step out exactly as the PA instructs, and never push back on a patient who declines to have you there.
- Watch the intervals between patients as closely as the visits themselves. Much of the job lives there.
- Write notes after leaving the room rather than in it, and never anything that identifies a patient.
- Ask your questions in the gaps, and stop mid-sentence when the next patient is ready.
- Offer nothing clinical, even when a patient asks you directly. Point them back to the PA.
Common pitfalls
Treating it as an interview
You are a guest inside someone's working day. The measure of a good shadowing day is how little friction you added, which is also what makes a PA willing to write you a letter later.
Spending questions on published facts
Program prerequisites, average salaries and licensing rules are all online. Use your limited time on judgment, autonomy and what the work feels like from inside.
Only ever shadowing one setting
A PA in dermatology and a PA in emergency medicine share a credential and not much else. Two days in different settings teach you more than four days in one.
Leaving without a record of the hours
Most programs want documented hours with dates and a supervisor's credentials. Collect them before you leave, since chasing them by email months later frequently fails.
Afterwards
- 1Send a short thank-you within a day, naming one specific thing you learned.
- 2Log the date, hours, setting and the supervisor's name and credentials while you still have them.
- 3Write a page for yourself on what the work actually looked like. Your application essay will be built out of that page.
- 4If a reference was offered, confirm it in writing within the week so the offer is on record.
- 5Ask about shadowing a second setting through the same person, since a referral is far easier than a cold request.