These days NPs are not being treated as professionals that they are. Back to being RNs again, with a rotating schedule, PTO time that is difficult to work out, and must be "approved" by someone in another state, who could care less about the TCH promise of work life balance and needs to fill an open slot. Understaffing leads to problems with coverage. Sound familiar RNs? The NP leadership, understands, but the administrators, marketers, schedulers and even the "provider support staff" have never spent time in the clinics and don't have a clue.
We are not really Take Care Health as a culture anymore. We are Walgreens. Big push for the numbers. Top heavy. This was a simple concept. Provide basic healthcare where it's easy to access. They messed it up and now talk of hypertension, cholesterol , diabetes management. In a walk in clinic at the back of Walgreens! Profitability but at what expense? NP licenses?
You will work alone until you prove you need a medical assistant. That means you are swamped some days, and slow on others. When you are alone, and it's busy, you have angry patients. People will knock on your exam door. You will have no front desk person. Very sick patients that should be in the ER sit outside of your exam rooms for hours before you are able to triage them.
Be aware you are chief cook and bottle washer. You will open the clinic, see the patients, enter their insurance data, diagnose and treat, collect their copays, discharge. You are expected to do this in 20 minutes and the kiosk allows 3 patients per hour to sign in regardless of their acuity level. You will then cash out at the end of the day, swiffer mop the floors, wipe down the furniture, take out the trash, restock the room, return patient calls, and .... you will have patients signing in until 7:40 with an expectation that the "shift" ends at 8 p.m.
Flu season, you are a flu shot nurse given a goal for the number of shots to be given per store. That's on top of the illness that you'll see every winter season.
Then there are weekly changes, constant emails, updates, meetings, etc, that you can never keep up with.
Part time - might be a nice little side job. Full time, should be more rewarding and dignified.
Slower clinics in newer markets, may not yet be experiencing this... but they better get busy or their clinics may not make it.
