1. Clinical Sites: Provisional Programs
Program Directors 101 Pando ™ Workshop
Clinical Sites: Provisional Programs
John Burns
Mike Roscoe

2. Instructional Objectives
Identify and discuss the factors that affect securing clinical sites
Develop strategies to recruit and retain clinical sites
Develop a model for credit hour workload distribution for members of the clinical year team
Identify ways to meet the specific clinical education needs of their program

3. Clinical Rotations = SCPEs (skippys)
Supervised Clinical Practice Experiences (SCPEs)
Rotations / Clerkships
“far-in-the-future” event for new programs?
SCPEs often accounting for as much as 50% or more of your curriculum
They are often what can make or break a program
reliance on external people and variables that are often out of the control of the program.
Where do we start?
Mission Statement
Goals
Outcomes
Competencies
Accreditation standards

4. SCPE questions: How long should each SCPE be?
How many patients does each student need to see?
Do we want to require specific skills/diseases/numbers?
Would simulation count?
Remember, it is the program that makes this determination…it just has to be reasonable and defendable.

5. Planning (The foundation of all good education)
Must define expectations that meet the standards (The B3s)
Must have overall plan for a student to meet the expectations of the program – and be able to enter clinical practice
Each SCPE is a piece of the puzzle
Each SCPE has individual and unique outcomes
Must have an assessment process for these expectations
Has each student has acquired the required skills and course outcomes required by their specific program? –ARC wants to know
Preceptor evaluation? Good enough??
Why not?
EOR exam? Good enough??

6. Step 1: Figure out your expectations:
Hint: Do not think of didactic and experiential phases as separate events in your curriculum
Think holistically!
Step 1: Figure out your expectations:
Great resource on developing expectations from ARC-PA
CHANGE THE LINK ABOVE!!!!

7. Workload Distribution
Traditional academic setting
Credit hour
1 credit hour = ~14-16 total hours of “new” material for a semester
12-credit hour semester
Clinical Settings
More arbitrary set
Credit hours?
1.0 credit hour/week
Contact hours?
Direct hours a faculty/preceptor spends with a student
Can multiple by number of students for another marker
Hybrid model?

8. Factors that affect “securing” Sites
Intrinsic (internal) and extrinsic (external) factors
Intrinsic
Lack of Clinical Coordinator
Lack of support/understanding from your sponsoring institution
Lack of funds (dedicated to experiential year)
“Time distance”
Extrinsic
Competition in the market
Lack of community understanding of “PA”
“What is in it for me?”
Lack of preceptor – teaching knowledge

9. Strategies to Recruit and Retain Sites
Initial Recruitment – MOST DIFFICULT
This step is different for new programs
Why is this step different?
How do you we start getting preceptors?

10. All sites are not created equally!
Hierarchical system
Must start at the top!
What is needed from each level?
Affiliation Agreements?
Letters of Affiliation?
Letters of Agreement?
Takes time!

11. Specific clinical education needs
For a program to assess if SCPEs meet their needs is to first define what those needs are!
Goals
Outcomes
Competencies
Successful completion of a SCPE…
What does “successful” mean?
Triangulation of data
Unique to your program

12. Assessment of SCPEs and Clinical Students