I am working between two clinics. One of them is 1 minute from my hotel, and the other one is 15 minutes which is great. The clinic that is further out has a cafeteria which gives free lunch to providers. They have an amazing salad bar and the food is pretty good.
The town ended up being more rural than I thought. I have worked rural health before, but there is a helicopter at the clinic and a tiny hospital here with just a few beds. They consider themselves to be frontier rural since there isn’t a major hospital within 1 hour from here. A lot of the patients are ranchers and farmers.
On my first day, I was a bit nervous because I wasn’t sure if the patient population would be of higher acuity than I am used to. The physician that was orienting me mentioned they do a lot of casting and suturing, which is more like an urgent care. She also said I would be seeing things there that I have never seen before in my life.
My experience is more primary care and that is my comfort level. But they told me there will always be another provider with me at the clinic so if I don’t feel comfortable doing a procedure, I can just let them know. The scheduling department asked me what procedures or types of patients I am not comfortable with so they can avoid putting them on my schedule.
They had me on a ramp up schedule seeing 1 patient per hour my first week, which was nice. It allowed me to figure out how the clinic is run. My orientation was only a couple of hours of introduction to the EHR. The patients are scheduled at 30-minute intervals. If they are a hospital follow up or an adult physical, they are scheduled at 60-minute intervals. That’s one thing I like about working in rural health, you get plenty of time with the patients. I am seeing about 14-18 patients per day. Even on a day when my schedule is full, I don’t feel overwhelmed.
The majority of the patients I see are with acute cold symptoms, workers compensation, sports physicals, well child checks, hospital follow ups, and other acute complaints like UTIs or back pain. They keep established patients following up for their routine visits with their PCP. I am enjoying having pediatric patients again.
Everyone here is really nice. The staff is friendly and helpful. The patients are very appreciative and are not the typical antibiotic or opioid seekers you may find in other areas. I have been seeing a lot of pediatric patients which I am happy about, since I needed that experience. Not to mention the kids have been super cute and easy patients. They are definitely less complex than the geriatric population I am used to seeing.
There are a few cons working here. One con is sometimes they accept patients that should really just go to the ER. I don’t think anyone is triaging these calls. For instance, I had a 6-week old baby with new onset seizures on my schedule (in the acute visit slot). I had to tell them to call the mom and bring the baby to the ER, as there isn’t much I could do for them in the clinic.
I also don’t like that the last patient is scheduled at 4:30pm, and we finish at 5pm. So, if the patient shows up a bit late, by the time they are roomed, it’s 4:45pm. I wish they gave the last 30 min as admin time to catch up on notes.
All in all, it’s been a great assignment so far and I am really enjoying my time here!
