You can find maritime workers tugging barges, captaining ferries, manning cruise ships or transporting cargo across oceans. Their jobs — often perilous — can keep them at sea for weeks, making any time on land scarce and precious.
That’s why Port Tampa Bay and the University of South Florida’s College of Nursing have opened a clinic in Florida’s largest port to improve workers’ access to health care while they’re ashore.
As of May 29, the Seafarers Center Clinic became available to the thousands of maritime workers who pass through Port Tampa Bay each year. The USFfunded staff includes two nurse practitioners and a patient care associate. It marks the first nurse-run and-operated clinic at any port worldwide.
“Being able to meet that need, for the seafarers especially, is helpful because some of them can’t get off the ship because they don’t have a visa,” says Duellyn Pandis, the clinic’s director of clinical practice. “Depending on what we have to do, we might be able to go on the ship to do the assessment. And that really helps alleviate the burden.”
The team saw its first 50 patients this summer. Its offerings include routine primary care, like well visits and physicals, as well as care for common acute and chronic health issues. Patients can also receive physicals, immunizations and point-of-care tests for blood glucose, pregnancy, rapid strep and more.
“We’re hoping to become credentialed so that we can bill insurance at some point,” Pandis says. “But its (price) is very comparable and probably a lot less than going to the Minute Clinic or an urgent care.”
Port Tampa Bay was responsible for building out the 1,000-plus-sq.-ft. clinic, which includes four examination rooms, a lab, a conference room, a nurse’s station and a waiting room. It sits in the port’s restricted zone, providing easy access for maritime workers who may not have the time or documentation needed to leave port. The proximity also cuts response times during medical emergencies, in which sailors previously had to wait up to 40 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. “There have been a couple of deaths at the port just from lack of access,” Pandis says.
She hopes the Seafarers Center Clinic will also serve as a training site for nursing students by spring 2025.