&
West
Virginia Area Health Education Centers
Conference
Call
In Attendance: Norman
Ferrari, Brenda Michael, Bob Foster, DO, Amy Holbrook, Kathleen Bors, JoAnn Raines, Malinda Turner, Lora Adkins
Staff: Jodie Jackson, Rose McCluskey, April L
Vestal, Sandra Y. Pope, Jacki Novacich
The
purpose of this meeting was to discuss the high demand of family medicine
rotations in July and August. WVSOM is
looking at diverting some of their students to rotations that are not with
family medicine preceptors, but with preceptors who have a predominantly family
medicine practice. It was discussed that
TRACKER cannot be used as a scheduling tool.
Not because of the limitations of TRACKER, but because
of the inability to always be able to pin down when (mostly volunteer) preceptors
are going to be available. Summer
is the peak time for vacations for preceptors, but usually site coordinators
can work around a preceptor being gone for a week and still schedule a
rotation. It is estimated that about 20%
of preceptors will be unavailable in July and August. We also have to consider that PAs also use
medical preceptors, but according to Lora Adkins, and Malinda Turner, the site
coordinators on the conference call, most site coordinators give priority to
the schools that have an RHEP mandate over the PA programs that don’t have an
RHEP mandate. Malinda also stated that
her consortia had available preceptors) in July and August last year that were
not utilized, so the family medicine preceptors are not saturated with students
during that time and would appear to be regional issues rather than state-wide.
It
was mentioned that Rose is currently working on a feature in Tracker that will
allow RHEP coordinators to go into Tracker and specify specific date ranges
when preceptors are not available, for example, vacation dates or periods when
preceptors have other responsibilities that preclude them from taking
students. This information will be used
in two different ways:
1) When scheduling a rotation, the list of
preceptors will show ONLY those preceptors who are available during the dates
of that rotation request
2) The “show scheduled dates” tool will also
indicate these unavailable dates
There
seemed to be some confusion about the “show scheduled dates tool.” This tool can be accessed by CAMPUS
COORDINATORS by clicking on the “find slot” button on the main menu in
Tracker. Brenda Michael was talking
specifically about the section where you can choose a preceptor by name to see
a calendar showing approved, requested and verified rotation dates. This tool can be accessed by RHEP
COORDINATORS on their main menu: choose a discipline and clicking the “Find
available slot” button on the main menu in Tracker. Norm Ferrari, from WVU, suggested that there
should be a point person for campus coordinators to call when all three of a
student’s requests have been turned down.
There was an agreement on this and Jodie, April and Rose will discuss
this and come up with a plan.
Bob
Foster and Amy Holbrook, from WVSOM, stated that their students on Other Rural
rotations do not utilize RHEP preceptors and do not use RHEP housing. It was decided that there needed to be more
discussion on this issue, and another conference call would be scheduled before
the
Next
Steps:
1)
Jodie
to ask site coordinators to fill in specialty for the 58 field professors who
are in TRACKER without a specialty and to put information about board
certification in the “Brief Biography” section of TRACKER (until Rose creates a
field for this).
2)
Jodie
to email site coordinators and campus coordinators to ask them to make sure
that the faculty appointment information in TRACKER is up to date. Amy
Holbrook to call Rose to get instruction on how to add faculty appointment
information to TRACKER and Amy to instruct the WVSOM statewide campus
coordinators on this
3)
Once
specialty information is complete in TRACKER, Rose will do a chart like the chart
sent previously but this time with only the number of students weeks that
students spent WITH BOARD CERTIFIED FAMILY MEDICINE PRECEPTORS
4)
Jacki
Novacich will be sending out dates for another conference call to be held in
3-4 weeks.
With
no further discussion, the meeting was adjourned.