Clinical coordination and the experiential year in physician assistant education

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.

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.

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).

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.