The Northport Veteran’s Administration Medical Center (VAMC) is located 25 minutes west of Stony Brook University, and serves as one of the residency training sites for the Stony Brook Adult Neurology Residency program. The neurology resident rotation at the Northport VA Medical Center is designed to provide exposure mostly to ambulatory neurology, with increasing levels of autonomy accorded to more senior residents.
There are no Neurology inpatients at the Northport VAMC, but there is an active inpatient Neurology consult service, other inpatient services, and the Emergency Department. Neurology Clinic at VAMC provides care to a mix of older veterans and younger veterans of tours in the Middle East. Many patients seek care for chronic pain, headache, radiculopathy, and neuropathy. Some older patients are followed for dementia and Parkinson’s disease. The clinics are very busy, affording residents considerable experience with outpatient neurology, the predominant setting for neurology practice today. Every patient seen during clinic is seen directly with an attending, all of whom are fellowship trained, board-certified neurologists. There is often an opportunity to provide longitudinal continuity of care since many of the VAMC patients in the clinic setting can be scheduled to return to clinic on another month that the resident is available. The use of telemedicine and teleneurology has truly flourished at the VAMC since the COVID pandemic and will likely continue to be integrated long-term for the care of VAMC patients, resulting in an outstanding educational opportunity for our residents.
The Northport VA Medical Center inpatient and outpatient records are organized together in the Computerized Patient Record System (CPRS). Patient notes, labs, test results, orders, medications, demographic information are available to authorized users. The resident makes all entries directly into the computerized record. This system is also capable of interfacing with other VA systems so patient records from other sites are easily accessible. Additionally, PACS is available for viewing films.
Days typically begin at 8:00 am and end at 5:00 pm when clinic ends.
VAMC Northport is a fully integrated member of the Neurology program at Stony Brook. VAMC Northport has many fully integrated residency programs with Stony Brook including Internal Medicine, Neurology, Surgery, Psychiatry, Orthopedics, as well as many other surgical subspecialties and numerous medical fellowship programs.
For additional information, the Northport VA Medical Center website is located here.
