Portsmouth Branch Clinics

[CS238]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm a soon to be Navy PA and it looks like I'll probably be heading to one of the branch clinics of Portsmouth for my first duty station (there are 7 of them, I believe). A shot in the dark here, but my question is: does anyone have any experience/recommendations for which branch clinic might be a good duty station? The OIC mentioned giving me a choice in the upcoming weeks, so I'd like to make an intelligent decision, but I'm really not very familiar with the clinics and online research has yielded little, other than that the clinics have different locations/hours and that at least one of them (Boone, I believe) services all branches of the military, but perhaps all of them do. Again, not very familiar. Do the patient populations between the different clinics vary a great deal or not so much?

 

For the clinics that have extended hours, what do clinician's schedules look like? I wouldn't mind doing 3 12's, but I'm not sure how they schedule providers in the clinics that have extended hours.

 

Hopefully someone has some experience with the area, as I have no idea and we all know what happens when you don't make a decision for yourself in the military. 

 

Thanks!

[cop to pa]

Portsmouth, NH has just the one clinic. I'm assuming you mean portsmouth, VA, or Hampton roads. All my information is from the enlisted side and is over 15 years old. Things may have changed.

 

The geographic area is huge. That is why there are 10 branch clinics. They mostly all are self contained primary care/occupational med clinics with pharmacy and lab. I can't speak to specifics about each, save that the Boone clinic is in Little Creek, which is SPECWAR territory. They (mostly) take care of themselves, but I remember a lot of family being cared for at that clinic.

 

Other than individual politics and dynamics, they're fairly similar. Take a look at where you will be living and look at clinic near there.

[HMtoPA]

I don't know exactly how things work at the NMCP branch clinics, but I'm getting ready to PCS to a NAVHOSP on the West Coast and the Family Medicine clinic there has extended hours, including Saturday mornings. They don't do 12 hour shifts or anything, but they have a "late start/late stay" during the week, and do a duty rotation for the Saturday. So you maybe get one Saturday every 4 or 6 weeks, and one late stay every week or two?