With a biology degree go to graduate school and get a Physicians Assistant of Anesthesia(PAA) degree or switch to nursing now, get a nursing degree, work 2 years in critical care as a nurse, go to Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists(CRNA) school. Both the PAA and CRNA schools are 2 years but the CRNA program requires 2 years of on the job nursing before graduate school.
In a hospital with an Anesthesiologist(MD), both PAA and CRNA do the same thing and are payed the same. The difference is CRNAs can work alone without an Anesthesiologist and PAAs can’t. The CRNA has the potential to make a lot more money working at outpatient surgery centers working alone and billing each patient individually, not getting payed by the hour. All of these outpatient surgeries are done on people with insurance or people who pay cash up front, the uninsured are sent to hospitals.
Should start out at around 125K fresh out of school and be at 170K after 4 years on the job, that’s for a 30 to 40 hour week. Overtime after 40 hours and the overtime is all you want or none if you don’t want any. CRNAs working outpatient surgery centers can easily double this pay. This job is highly in demand and there are always jobs available.
Surgery PAs(payed salary) make half what PAAs make and work double the hours. There are a couple of PAAs/CRNAs around here working lots of overtime every year that break 400K. This is not what I do but wish I did, just work with these guys.