Va Nurse practiotiners

[canchaser, BSN, RN]

Seeking input on the VA clinics. How are offices ran? Visits? I've heard every 30 minutes, not as stressful as the civilian way of life? Have you found these questions to be true? I know benefits are outstanding, and you may get loans paid back. I'm considering application to a job two hours away from home. Thanks for your input

[PG2018]

I interned at a VA outpatient mental health clinic.

Everyone got one hour for evals and 30 minutes for follow-ups/med checks. I think it was too much personally. The salaries aren't great, but the benefits are. You could get a better job making up the difference paid by the benefits. However, you'll be doing good things at the VA. I really enjoyed it. There were no children and very few women. That made practicing considerably easier. You also have a buffet of labs, imaging, and consults readily available to you. I think each provider shared a RN with another provider, and you had a team of clerks doing your scheduling, etc. However, you didn't really have any other admin support like if you wanted documents scanned or copied then you were on your own. Their EHR system is really nice although everything is narrative. You type endlessly. I use Credible at my employer, and it's really nothing but clicking check boxes. Their EHR allows you to search all VA records on your patient nationwide as well as DOD records (although the latter didn't always work). I found the only stressful thing about it was when I had a preceptor in the office with me then I felt compelled to use the entire window of time. (I have a hard time spending an hour with the same patient).