Going back to school after five years of clinical practice. What changes, what doesn't, and what surprised me.
Besh yillik klinik amaliyotdan keyin maktabga qaytish.
People ask me all the time: why go to medical school if you were already practicing? The honest answer is that being a PA showed me exactly where my ceiling was — and I wanted to go past it. I loved clinical medicine. I was good at it. But there were questions I couldn't answer, decisions I couldn't make, and patients I couldn't serve at the level they deserved.
So in July 2023, at 30 years old with five years of clinical experience, I started medical school at NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine.
The hardest part of the PA-to-MD transition isn't the science. It's the identity. You go from being a licensed clinician who manages patients independently to being a student who asks permission to take a history. You know things your classmates don't — but you also don't know things they do. It's disorienting in a way that no one warns you about.
The transition from PA to medical student isn't a promotion. It's a dismantling and rebuilding. You have to let go of who you were to become who you're meant to be.
What helped was accepting that my prior experience wasn't a shortcut — it was a different kind of foundation. Experienced enough to trust my instincts, humble enough to know when they were wrong.
Clinical rotations were where my PA background became an advantage. I knew how to talk to patients, how to present to attendings, how to manage a clinical day. I earned honors in all seven core clerkships — Internal Medicine, Surgery, Pediatrics, OB/GYN, Psychiatry, Neurology, and Ambulatory Medicine. Not because I was the smartest person in the room, but because I'd been doing this for five years.
My sub-internship in Internal Medicine was the closest I'd felt to being myself in a clinical setting since starting medical school. Managing my own patients, making real decisions, working up complex presentations — it felt like coming home.
Medical school also gave me something PA practice never did: protected time for research. I published my first case reports, contributed to a preclinical study on microRNA therapeutics that was accepted to Nature Communications, and presented at the American Heart Association. I started asking the questions that clinical medicine made me curious about — and for the first time, I had the infrastructure to pursue them.
If you're a PA thinking about medical school: it's worth it, and it's harder than you think — but not for the reasons you expect. The science is manageable. The ego work is the real challenge. You'll feel like a beginner again, and you'll need to be okay with that. But the clinical instincts you built as a PA don't go away. They make you a better student, a better colleague, and eventually, a better physician.
Odamlar doimo so'rashadi: agar allaqachon amaliyot qilib bo'lsang, nega tibbiyot maktabiga borasan? Shifokor yordamchisi bo'lish menga shiftim qaerdaligini ko'rsatdi — va men undan o'tishni xoladim.
PA dan MD ga o'tishning eng qiyin qismi fan emas. Bu identitet. Siz mustaqil bemorlarni boshqaradigan litsenziyalangan klinikdan tarix olish uchun ruxsat so'raydigan talabaga aylansiz.
PA dan tibbiyot talabiga o'tish — bu ko'tarilish emas. Bu buzib qayta qurish.
Yettita asosiy klinik rotatsiyaning barchasida honors oldim. PA tajribam bu yerda afzallik bo'ldi.
Tibbiyot maktabi menga PA amaliyoti hech qachon bermagan narsani berdi: tadqiqot uchun himoyalangan vaqt. Birinchi holat hisobotlarimni nashr ettirdim va AHA da taqdimot qildim.