Preceptor impact

^{By Donna Stoker}

Do you remember wanting to know where your clinical placements would be for the year? The anxiety and excitement of waiting for the Clinical Coordinator staff to release your schedule?

Our clinical rotation staff is still working hard to find rotations for the fall semester. Please consider helping our students by becoming a preceptor. We are having difficulty finding rotations for students in some areas, especially women’s health, pediatrics, internal medicine, cardiology and other selected specialties. All core and elective options are welcome.

There are currently six active PA programs in Michigan, with four more seeking accreditation - Michigan State University, U of M Flint, Concordia College (in Ann Arbor) and Lawrence Tech. We want the best PAs to be preceptors for OUR students, and that means we want YOU - graduates of our program - to be our preceptors.

You can earn Category 1 CMEs by being a preceptor.  You can earn up to 10 Category 1 CME credits per calendar year, one CME credit for four weeks (160 hours) of precepting.

Students do not have to be with one preceptor for the entire rotation; they can work with different providers to meet the requirements. Students can be very helpful; one alumni preceptor recently said he was more productive while precepting because the student could start a new patient while he finished with another. You can choose which patients the student sees, they don't have to see all your patients. We can provide you with many resources to make precepting a positive experience for you and the student.

If you have at least two years of experience, you are eligible to be a preceptor. If you are interested, our director of clinical education can come to you and your colleagues with a short presentation. We will work with your availability to take students and honor requests you may have (i.e. male or female only) if possible. 

Please contact Donna Stoker, clinical rotations coordinator, at @email or (269) 387-5321 or Tami Gaishin, director of clinical education, at @email or (269) 387-5316 for more information or to discuss placements.

We look forward to working with you!