Family Practice to Minute Clinic

[SweetRaine]

I have a phone interview with CVS Minute Clinic. I have 1.5 years of NP experience, most of which in general surgery and the last 3 months in family practice. Now I see everything, and I go home worrying about... everything. Our corporate company wants us to see 25 pt/day and is extremely number driven. I work with two MDs and no other NPs. Usually it is just me and one doc in the office. I feel like the doc does not have the time to help me because of the demands placed upon her. The office staff is very stiff, anxious, and they don't get along with each other. I get along with everybody, but it is just a stressful environment. The surgery job was so much less stressful!!! But, I am an FNP, not acute care, so I want to work within my scope (which is what led to my switch). I'm just not happy at this family practice. I like primary care, though, and I'm hoping Minute Clinic will allow me to see primary care pts (but not everything under the sun), counsel pts on preventive care, and be able to go home not worrying about every decision I made. Can anyone compare the stress level between family practice and a retail clinic? I will be doing it for mental sanity reasons. I understand the restricted autonomy I may find, and quite frankly, that is OK.

[froggg123]

A typical day is about 30 patients, you work 10 hour days and are expected to see one patient every 20 minutes, it gets really stressful when you have a line of people waiting and you have to go to lunch or at the end of the day when your leaving and people start crying, please see just one more.

The insurance and collecting money is really stressful sometimes too, I hated asking people for money. And in between patients you still have to mop, dust, sanitize, empty garbage, empty the blue bin -papers with pt information, and closing out your cash and checks at the end of the day

The guidelines are very restrictive which is good in some ways but if you want to give a respiratory pt steroids for reason X, you have to call the MD and get permission.

OTHERWISE

it pays really good, and it can be easy if you dont mind he guidelines and let them help you its pretty easy. I suppose if your not type A like me it could be a great comfortable job.

[BlueDevil,DNP, DNP, RN]

I have never worked in one. The only person I know that does does not like it at all. She works in a "Minute Clinic" in a CVS. She does it because they pay her $55 an hour and she has 4 hour evening shifts, so she can work 8 hours a week in the evenings when her husband gets home and her twins don't ever have to go to day care. She makes double student loan payments and they are getting their house paid off, and that is what is important to them. She said she feels as much like a maid/waitress/cashier as she ever did and not at all like a professional anything (she is DNP prepared), but it is a means to an end for her. She has no help in the clinic. She does all the intake/paperwork, history, vitals, and has to take the money, do the cleaning, everything. She has about 10-15 minutes per patient, start to finish, including the cashiering part, lol.

I at least get 15 minutes with an entire support staff to help! And with bonuses, I make quite a bit more money at an hourly rate than she does, and no one has ever asked me to make change or mop the floor. However, I don't get to work 4 hours days if and when I feels like it, lol. She definitely has the better end of the deal on that score!

If I were you, I'd ask to shadow for several shifts before I made that leap. From what my colleague has described, it sounds as terrible than working the register at the front of the CVS. Basically the same, only with occasional vomit. The extra money to clean up said vomit doesn't make it any better IMO, considering you basically need permission and instructions to do it. I haven't gone to school for 22 years to read a schematic on how to clean up puke.

[PatMac10,RN, RN]

Interesting thread.