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Orthopedic Urgent Care PA Experience


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Hi all! I'm interviewing for an Ortho Urgent Care next week and I wanted to see if any PAs out there had any experience in this setting. This service is provided by a large private Ortho group in our area. I've found good articles on benefits of Ortho Urgent Care centers such as shorter wait times, easier access to ortho care, and better follow up with ortho surgeon if needed. I haven't found any related threads on this forum yet though, so I thought I should try!

I'm about to graduate end of March, so this would potentially be my first job as a PA. I've always really liked ortho; I had my first rotation in ortho surgery as an elective and it was great! I'm excited about hopefully starting this job, but still had some questions:

-What do you think are the pros and cons of working in this setting?

-What are the most common complaints that you see?

-Do you have time for PRN gigs that will help you keep up with more general practice i.e. urgent care, EM?

-Anything that you would have liked to ask during your interview or establish anything before starting?

I would love to hear any responses, tips, or advice. Thank you!

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If you are alone in the center it is a terrible idea. 

As a new grad you need an onsite 2nd provider for a minimum of 6-12 months if not longer.  All the Ortho UC's around me are staffed by PA's with 5 plus years of hard Ortho experience.  Going directly into an UC as a new grad IF alone is a baaaaaaaad idea.

 

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I have about 6 months experience in ortho now and I occasionally work our ortho urgent care. MC complaints: shoulder pain, BACK PAIN, knee pain, sprained ankle, and back pain again lol. Will there be another PA working the urgent care? Is the urgent care in the same building as regular clinic? This is important because if you don't know something or need someone to look over X-rays, it would be EXTREMELY BENEFICIAL to have other surgeons/PAs that you can bounce ideas off of or have them look at films with you. 

For example, we have a hand surgeon so if a person comes in with a angulated fx and its on the border of cast vs surgery, its nice to walk down the hall and ask the surgeon to talk a peak. 

questions to ask: will there be other staff there to look at X-rays if you need help? Will you have to put your own casts on? Training period involved?  those are the first i can think of. 

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