Tales from the trenches: physician assistants' perspectives about precepting students.

PURPOSE: A national survey of physician assistants (PAs) found that only 25% of respondents were involved as preceptors for PA students in 2011, and it also identified important barriers and incentives to precept PA students. These findings offer limited information for understanding the nature of this complex phenomenon within its context. The purpose of this study was to further describe key factors that influence the involvement of PAs as preceptors. METHODS: A qualitative study of four focus groups with clinically practicing PAs (N = 29) was conducted at the American Academy of Physician Assistants' annual conference in May 2012. Semistructured interview questions and follow-up probes were used to elicit participants' perspectives about their own and/or witnessed preceptor experiences. The group discussions were audio-recorded, professionally transcribed, and then analyzed line-by-line by four investigators using conceptual and free coding. The independently coded transcripts were merged, and iterative analysis was used to identify recurrent themes until saturation was reached. RESULTS: Four themes emerged: (1) The preceptor role provides an opportunity to "pay back," or contribute to future colleagues' training while advancing the clinician's own knowledge; (2) Student qualities that incentivize precepting are characterized by motivation and self-directed learning, independent of the level of medical knowledge and/or prior experience; (3) Preceptors value feeling connected with the PA program through initial and ongoing communication; (4) Significant competition for clinical rotation sites for various health professional learners limits the access to sites and preceptors. CONCLUSION: PAs identified key areas for potential preceptor recruitment and retention interventions.

Clinical coordination and the experiential year in physician assistant education.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine how clinical coordination is accomplished within physician assistant (PA) education and to identify effective practices for placing PA students into experiential rotations. METHODS: A survey was sent to all fully accredited PA programs asking the clinical coordinators to provide information about themselves and their institutions, programs, activities, and the individuals for which they had responsibility. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Ten independent variables were selected due to their expected potential to influence the following four dependent variables: length of most recent accreditation cycle, clinical coordination satisfaction, hours spent cultivating sites, and summed hours of clinical coordinator tasks that most directly impact students. Bivariate correlations between each independent variable and each dependent variable were calculated. The level of statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. RESULTS: Fifty-two out of 130 eligible programs (40%) responded in part to the survey. The tasks clinical coordinators performed and the level to which they were responsible to complete these tasks varied considerably. Clinical coordinators reported being satisfied with their roles, able to help others, and successful in their work. The correlation between clinical coordination satisfaction and the availability of the preceptor incentive of campus privileges was inversely significant (r(25) = -0.464, p = 0.01). CONCLUSION: This study provides an overview of PA program clinical coordination practices and may have implications for programs that wish to benchmark or develop strategies to normalize the activities associated with their program's experiential year.