By Rebecca Walker TEAM Public Affairs, Patuxent River
A series of beeps go off and Lt. Jack Wilcox retrieves the message from his pager.

"We're calling concerning my 3-year-old baby, and my baby who is due in December. We'll be here, please call."

Thirteen similar requests have come in that morning and Wilcox, a certified pediatric nurse practitioner and Lt. David Mosman, senior pediatrician, who both work at the Naval Medical Clinic at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, will return all of their patients' phone calls between seeing those in the clinic with appointments.

"We want to give 100 percent access to our patients," Wilcox said, while checking another in-coming page.

This is just one of the reasons why the pediatric clinic recently gained the No. 1 slot in the Patient Satisfaction Category of the Department of Defense's annual clinic survey reports. The survey, which rated military clinics worldwide, was based on client satisfaction from July 1999 to June 2000.

This is the first time the clinic has ever received such high recognition, Mosman said.

"We were surprised when we heard we were in first place, but very happy with it. "This was a reflection on our patients because we have such a great patient population."

Wilcox said each patient gets three business cards - "one for Mom, one for Dad and one for the refrigerator," he said. On that card is a list of five phone numbers, including the doctor's pager numbers and an e-mail address.

"If the patients are in California on vacation and their kid gets sick, they call us and we tell them what they need to do," Wilcox said. "I doubt there are a lot of doctors out who would give you their pager number, but 24-hour access is what our clinic is all about."

Overseeing some 1,800 clients makes that constant patient-doctor accessibility hard at times, but it's something Mosman and Wilcox said they could never imagine doing without. Constant help from the nurses and corpsmen also help relieve a lot of the workload, too, the doctors concurred.

The doctor's patients are not the only ones who recognize their hard work.

"I work on a daily basis with the 'dynamic duo' there and I am not surprised by this recognition," said Sally McErlean, a nurse with the New Parent Support Program at the Navy Family Service Center. "Lt. David Mosman and Lt. Jack Wilcox are amazing! I've been a pediatric nurse for over 30 years and have never worked with more compassionate, caring, pro-active professionals -- who, by the way, know how to have fun. They are a treasure for Patuxent River and for Navy families."

Capt. F.H. Jenkins, commanding officer at the clinic, said, "Lt. Mosman and Lt. Wilcox made this happen. They are the ones behind the pediatric clinic getting the No. 1 rating."