The Buckets by Greg Cravens for March 17, 2014

“Doc in a box,” a great idea.

It was pretty handy for some things this past year- having a doc-in-the-closet at the local Walgreens. I’m old enough to feel weird about it, but whattaya gon’ do?

It was pretty handy for some things this past year- having a doc-in-the-closet at the local Walgreens. I’m old enough to feel weird about it, but whattaya gon’ do?

Click…pause…click again… “Darn it!”

Agreed Sarah.

I met a lot of “physician assistants in training” at my old university job. I never could understand why anyone would go that route when you could spend a little time interning and take a few other courses to be a “real doctor”. It seems many were former nurses, EMT’s, phlebotomists, etc. where PA was a significant step up, and they did not have the energy or family financial support needed to go through the traditional physician training route.

Years ago, I injured my shoulder at work. The medical center was staffed by a father-son team of doctors. The young one x-rayed my shoulder then diagnosed tendentious and prescribed two weeks of light duty. Two weeks later, I returned and got the father half of the team. “What do we have going on?” Tendentious from a work injury" I answered. "Who told you that you have tendentious? he roared. “Al did”! I answered. Al is his son, the other doctor. The old man softened and said “Well, I don’t believe everything my patients tell me”. He was a surgeon and industrial specialist and I suspect that he had been burned in the past by work related injuries. “That’s OK”, I replied. “I don’t believe everything that my doctor tells me”.

You guys have doctors in closets? At Wal-Greens? I thought Wal-/Greens was just a big box store used as landmarks for us tourists. .

Yeah, they have them at CVS too. They call them the Minute Clinic, and they handle things like shots, diagnosing the flu, minor injuries – that sort of stuff.