Urgent Care

[anxiousnadd]

Hey everyone,

Even though my thoughts may change as I'm just an M4 right now, but I have found that I'm pretty interested in urgent care. I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on pursuing this post-EM residency? Do any programs have rotations for the residents in an Urgent Care center? I guess it would be wise if I spent some time in a privately-owned practice to see for myself?

Just wanted to get your opinions on EPs going into Urgent Care.

Thanks!

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[BADMD]

Where I trained, Fast Track was available, which is essentially urgent care. shifts were mixed in as 2nd and 3rd year. At the two residencies I'm associated with, both include Fast Track/Urgent Care as part of the program.

 

[Apollyon]

See, when I was a resident, I asked the division chief about this one day; we didn't do fast track shifts. She said to me that EM residency is major league, and, if you want to do fast track, that's like going to minor league ball. You're more than ready (and even overprepared) to work it from your first day in an FT.

 

[BADMD]

You're more than ready (and even overprepared) to work it from your first day in an FT.

There is something to be said for learning to move the meat. During my last FT shift, I averaged 6 per hour until we closed, with 10 coming in during during one 60 minute period. You need some experience with that before diving in head first.

 

[SoCuteMD]

There is something to be said for learning to move the meat. During my last FT shift, I averaged 6 per hour until we closed, with 10 coming in during during one 60 minute period. You need some experience with that before diving in head first.

I don't know about other people, but at my residency we definitely don't have 24 hour fast track. Urgent care type patients come to the main ED for almost half the day, so I see any number of fast track patients on most shifts.

If you can move the main side of the ED efficiently, I'm sure moving fast track efficiently will not be a problem.

 

[pink]

I'm in my last year of residency and am currently working a shift at the urgent care where I moonlight. It's great because we do have fast track in my ER, so I don't see a lot of lower acuity patients and it takes a different mindset to move quickly and handle their various issues. My advice is to definitely moonlight when you're in residency and do it in a different setting. And working urgent care is OK (although you will not get paid the same as an ER doc in a regular ED), but you could start your own urgent care if you are business minded. Also, you could work at a stand alone ED or an ED with lower acuity when you get out.....that would be similar to working urgent care.

 

[pinipig523]

I think that doing FT shifts during residency is crucial and I don't think it's something that you can expect to be proficient with when you become a junior attending at day 1 when you havent done any.

The thing about our FT team at County is that there's always something that we've never seen before in nearly every shift. No matter if it's the senior resident, there's always something new that we're not familiar with in the FT team and I think doing FT shifts allows you to have less of this "unfamiliar" FT patients when you go out into the real world.

 

[bartleby]

While it is nice to have some exposure to fast track during residency, you are going to see plenty of lower acuity patients. From the residency standpoint, you need to be spending the bulk of your time and effort learning to take care of the sickies. If you do that, everything else will fall into place.