shesellsseashells123 Posted March 26, 2021 Share Posted March 26, 2021 TLDR: Can someone who is an NHSC scholar, who did NOT do a residency, and has successfully gotten a job and started their service...please comment on what their job search looked like, and what "Specialties" they were allowed to search for and apply to? I am an NHSC scholar; I have graduated and am now performing my job search. For the past several years, I have been under the impression that a job in any primary care subspecialty would be available to me for my service. i.e. any job in adult medicine, family medicine, geriatrics, pediatrics, psychiatric-mental health, or women’s health. Very recently, I have been informed by my regional advisor (and regional supervisor) that that is in fact not the case. Verbatim, from the supervisor's email: "In your 2018 NHSC application for Physician Assistant, you did not select a specialty. As a result, you will not be eligible to accept employment specializing in adult medicine, family medicine, geriatrics, pediatrics, psychiatric-mental health, or women’s health. Any NHSC employment opportunities must have “None” identified as the specialty. Scholars are eligible to compete for all scholarship vacancies in their discipline/specialty." That is to say, if I want to work in a job that is listed as any of the above specialties, I would have had to complete a residency. Since I have not, I am not allowed to apply for any jobs that have a specialty listed. Not even Adult Medicine or Family Medicine, the least specific of all of the subspecialties, qualifies. Not only is this news to me, but this seems......like it can't possibly be correct. When I perform a search in the Workforce Connector, plugging in "Physician Assistant" into Discipline, my HPSA score (20), and "None" for Specialty, there are "0 Results" in the entire country. For every single job employers post on the Workforce Connector (at least for Physician Assistants), they select ONE OF aforementioned subspecialties with which to label their job listing. I feel like these people must be mistaken, that I must be misunderstanding something. But I have asked every single person at the NHSC I could possibly get in touch with, and asked in every possible combination of words I can think of, to get clarification. And I keep....not getting clarification. Can someone, who did not do a residency, please comment on what "Specialties" you were allowed to search for and apply to? And what kind of job you finally ended up getting? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sas5814 Posted March 26, 2021 Share Posted March 26, 2021 You may or may not find someone here that has an answer. There is a Facebook group for NHSC scholars. You might get more information and help there. Good luck. It sounds wrong to me as well but I don't know diddly about the subject. National Health Service Corps - Home | Facebook 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator ventana Posted March 27, 2021 Moderator Share Posted March 27, 2021 strangely you specialty is PA.... at least by medicare standards... I always put down the specialty of IM (Which is true for my knowledge base) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator EMEDPA Posted March 27, 2021 Moderator Share Posted March 27, 2021 Not NHSc specific, but I never let anyone list my specialty as Physician Assistant. Kinda funny, according to my state medical board I am the only PA listed as practicing Emergency Medicine in the state(clearly not the case) because I picked EM off the specialty list, not PA. 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator rev ronin Posted March 28, 2021 Administrator Share Posted March 28, 2021 If you had no specialty, you should be allowed to add one. If you can demonstrate training in a new specialty, you should be able to add an additional one. Of course, as any veteran of high school debate knows, "should" means "ought to, but not necessarily will". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Catiedid Posted April 2, 2022 Share Posted April 2, 2022 Hi there, I just came across this post and wanted to know how things worked out for you? I am a NHSC scholar as well, and am pretty darn sure I put “none” under specialty as well because I hadn’t even begun my program at the time I applied for the scholarship…. I hope this problem was able to be resolved! Also, I would love to chat more about your experience in the program (when you heard from your regional advisor, how the job application and interview process went, etc). Best, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JessN Posted April 8, 2022 Share Posted April 8, 2022 I would also really appreciate an update too! I am in the process of applying and want to know if this is something I should modify in my application (I haven't started school yet so I don't really know what subspecialty I'd like). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NewGradPA22 Posted May 26, 2022 Share Posted May 26, 2022 I have a feeling their answer is not correct. I'm also a PA NHSC scholar and was told by my regional advisor that because our training is so broad and does not require additional training to work in these specialties, that I am open to apply to any. My job search currently includes anything family medicine, psychiatric mental health, and women's health. However, I will say that the regional advisors do not always seem particularly knowledgable on certain subjects - I actually had to explain the PA education and scope of practice to mine. I'm a recent graduate and am absolutely struggling with the job search though, so I would love to hear more about your experience. The NHSC search engines/databases are pretty horrible and finding PA specific jobs is very difficult. Almost everywhere posts for NPs instead of PAs, at least in what I've been able to find so far across the nation. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lmals Posted July 26, 2022 Share Posted July 26, 2022 Hi - how did this turn out? Apparently, though I don't remember this at all, I put "pediatrics" as my specialty when I was first applying and my advisor now says that I must complete my service years in peds. I am so confused since my contract never said anything about peds and no one ever brought it up again. I am praying that this is a mistake and I will be eligible for any family practice subspecialty like I thought... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
futurepalily Posted April 3 Share Posted April 3 On 7/26/2022 at 5:40 PM, Lmals said: Hi - how did this turn out? Apparently, though I don't remember this at all, I put "pediatrics" as my specialty when I was first applying and my advisor now says that I must complete my service years in peds. I am so confused since my contract never said anything about peds and no one ever brought it up again. I am praying that this is a mistake and I will be eligible for any family practice subspecialty like I thought... How did this turn out? I am applying right now and I dont know If i want to go into fam med or ob/gyn but dont want to be comitted to a certain area until I have done clincal year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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