Rotation Sites around Portland

[aimees]

I am finishing up the last 2 weeks of didactic (hooray!!) in Las Vegas and I'm hoping to set up my rotations in and around Portland beginning December. Unfortunately our school is not contracted with any providers, and I'm running into numerous road blocks trying to set them up myself. Many places are contracted out with OHSU and Pacific and say they can't take any other students. Does anyone have advice on who to contact, or who may be a willing preceptor? I'd like to join my husband who has already started a new career in Portland! Thanks for any insight!

[rev ronin]

Heh. Good luck with that. I can't speak for OHSU, but I know all of us Pacific students have been told that we will never be in Portland for more than 50% of our own rotations, and probably a lot less...

[hawk00eyed]

Man, Oregon is sounding so depressing for PA's... OHSU was (is?) one of my top choices too

[rev ronin]

Realize that Portland has had two (rather good, by all accounts I've read and my own experiences) PA schools for well over a decade. The Portland area is, to the best of my understanding, substantially saturated with PAs. All the practices that want PAs have them, and thus they have less motivation to precept students as a new-hire pre-screening tool.

 

There are plenty of good rotation sites within Oregon--The Coast, Eastern, Central, Willamette Valley... all have needs, preceptors, and are less saturated than the Portland PA job market. Pacific places students in rotations in plenty of surrounding states, as well as some much farther afield. This is just fine with me, since I want to end up back in Western Washington, rather than staying here in the Portland area.

[EMEDPA]

lots of jobs and sites in wa and rural oregon...

[Evan]

Any chance you can have your clinical coordinator contact the folks at OHSU or Pacific? Maybe they could work out a trade...

 

For example: you get a spot in Portland and someone from one of those programs gets something (they want) in Vegas...

 

Just a thought...

 

In any event: your school will have to have affiliation agreements with any site you attend. That means a ton of paperwork has to be done before you even set foot through the door. This can mean a lot of work for your clinical coordinator. Check with recent grads of your program to see if anyone has used sites in the Pacific Northwest. Those sites will be easier to work with as they will already have most of the paperwork done...

 

Good Luck!

[VictoriaO]

Depends on what specialty/type of rotation site you are looking for...

I'm on my clinical year at OHSU, and certain rotations are quite full and popular (or even scarce), whereas other specialty rotations (rheum, pulm) may have some openings. Certain places like OHSU are very student-friendly (although this may be limited to it's own students), whereas others like Providence and Adventist not so much.

 

I would ask your clinical coordinator to possibly contact ours and Pacifics, they might have some good advice about who is taking extra students. Heck, if I could do an extra ED or Peds ED rotation in Vegas I'd love to trade you for one of my electives here (my program says it's unlikely I'll get to do one in the NW, they are so short on EM sites). Try contacting the rotation coordinators at places that do take students like Legacy Emmanual, OHSU family medicine, SWMC, Portland Clinic, Old Town Clinic, the Portland VA, Tuality Hospital, and it's worth trying others.

What type of rotation are you looking for?

[aimees]

Sorry for the late response...it's my last week of didactic and with that comes loads of exams. I truly appreciate all the insight, words of encouragement, and helpful tidbits. I'm going up to Portland next week and will be able to meet with some folks. Hopefully one contact will help open doors to others. I talked to my clinical coordinator and asked him about trades--he said he'd look into it. I'll keep you all posted! Thanks again!