The Best Cities to Work in As a Physician Assistant

A physician assistant (PA) is a highly qualified position. If you have graduated as one, then congratulations! You are already in the position of being a highly attractive candidate. Health Jobs Nationwide, a health jobs board advertising many physician assistant jobs, say that the current jobseeker’s market and the relative talent shortage has meant that many healthcare providers are fighting over the best talent – and that certainly includes PAs.

Yet, the situation is not so extreme that PA graduates can simply throw a dart at a map of the U.S. and go wherever they want. For sure, they have a great deal of choice, but traveling across the country to a new healthcare position is still a reality for millions of healthcare candidates. If you are looking for somewhere to work, then the chances are that your options will be plentiful – but also limited.

Making the Right Choice

When faced with the option to work in several different places as a PA, you might soon find yourself a bit lost, especially if you have never been to many of the places where you could potentially work. Of course, the usual due diligence of properly vetting recruiters and their institutions applies, but this alone may not narrow the choice down to one. To do that, there are several factors to consider.

Factors to Consider

To help make the right choice, it is important to keep the right factors in mind. Here are some of the most important things to consider. Account for these first and after that you can make the more pleasant decision of what city you would like to live in:

Salary

There is no shame in caring foremost about salary. Student debt can be enormous, and every job seeker must always take salary into account. It is essentially a matter of wanting to be compensated fairly for all your hard work during your studies, and all the hard work which can be expected to do once you become a PA.

Currently, the states with the highest PA compensation are Washington, Alaska, and California. As you might have noticed, those are three quite different states when it comes to culture, cities, and weather. If you like the sound of California, then Salinas is the place where you can expect the biggest salary. In cooler Washington, it is the city of Yakima, and in chilly Alaska, the capital of Anchorage is the best place to go.

Cost of Living

But hold up – what does it actually cost to live in these places? This is an essential factor to consider in tandem with salary, as it tells you how far that salary will stretch. Accordingly, it is possible to adjust the salaries for cost of living. When this is done, the best states are Oklahoma, Michigan, and Texas. The best cities are Edmund for Oklahoma, Okemos for Michigan, and the town of Tyler for Texas.

Work Life Balance

Arguably more important than salary is work life balance, and that means choosing a city with a high livability and where you can make the most of your time. Smart Asset is an organization which has crunched the data in order to compute the most livable cities for PAs, based on a broad range of metrics.

Topping their list are the towns of Madison, Wisconsin, Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Remember, it is not all about money.

The cities mentioned in this article are all those that have proven consistently popular for PAs selecting a place to work. However, personal preference should not be an afterthought. Quite simply, it’s best to work somewhere where you would also like to live.