Naval Medical Center Portsmouth

In this episode, I'll be interviewing Dr. Derek Larson, a Navy infectious disease physician and current program director of the Infectious Disease Fellowship at Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command San Diego.

Dr. Larson attended medical school at Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine at Seton Hill and completed his residency in internal medicine at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth.

He then went on to complete his infectious disease fellowship at NMRTC San Diego in 2018.

His previous duty stations include Fort Belvoir Community Hospital in Virginia and 1st Medical Battalion at Camp Pendleton, California.

And I got the surgical training.

You go to Portsmouth Naval Hospital back then, anyway, it's basically they're trying to make you an oral surgery resident.

It's mostly what you do.

It's not general practice residency.

So I ended up going to the Navy as a hospital corpsman.

When I got assigned to my first duty station at Portsmouth Naval Hospital, they put me in psychiatry, and so that's where my journey in mental health began.

I went to school on the side.

I got picked out for a program and went to nursing school, got commissioned.

I don't remember jumping.

I don't remember that part on the ground, and only a couple of days later coming to at the, uh, ICU, intensive care section there at Portsmouth Naval Hospital.

In Virginia.

What was the, uh, what was the ground like at that, where you landed? Do you know?