EM at the VA

[suckstobeme]

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Hey Guys-
So there's a VA Hospital near the Community Hospital I'm gonna work at next yr. I was thinking about seeing if I could work there a couple shifts a month (like 4ish). What do you guys think? Does anyone work at a VA? or know anything about EM at the VA? What's it like in terms of pay/hours/ancillary/consultants/benefits, etc?

Thanks

 

[deleted109597]

Can't comment on pay, hours, or benefits really.
However, if it is anything like the VA at my medical school, you won't have access to various testing after hours, there won't be any BC/BE EPs there, and the transport to the "real" hospital for "real" emergencies will be an old station wagon.
This was only 3 years ago for the record.

 

[Apollyon]

As with many things, it depends where you're at. In Buffalo, the VA ED has docs, but no residents (or so it was last I knew), and a full admitting service. The hospital is just diagonal from the med school, but the closest other hospital is about 2 miles away. In Durham, the VA is across the street from Duke, so the ED is staffed by fellows from across all sorts of medical specialties that are moonlighting, but no one dedicated, and there is no one at night - a patient comes in, and an appropriate (or so they guess) resident is paged to come down and see the patient (either IM or general surgery). Even though Durham is a female surgery referral center, there is no ob/gyn there.

In Columbia, SC, the William Jennings Bryan Dorn VA is attached physically to Richland Memorial (main teaching hospital of the USC School of Medicine). The Spark M. Matsunaga VA in Honolulu is contiguous with the Tripler Army Medical Center, and does not have an ED.

 

[Venko]

I will be working at the VA in DC this july and they have BC / BE EM trained physicians there. The GWU faculty staff the VA so it is high quality care.