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How important is it for a PA school to have a relationship with a teaching hospital?


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I think it helps. I went to Hahnemann and we could go down the hall from a lecture, be in the hospital and do H+Ps for our history taking or physical exam courses without leaving campus. also we could attend grand rounds any time we wanted if a topic of interest was being presented.

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My program is affiliated with the large academic center nearby and we had great rotations and selections of our electives.  Those of us who stayed local also had the added benefit of having a foot in the door when it came to applying for jobs.  There is a competing program near us which sends their students all over the Northeast for their rotations, while the education is likely the same it undoubtedly makes life difficult during clinical year.

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14 hours ago, LeQuack said:

Sigh*, yeah I figured... 

You can definetly get quality rotations in non-academic hospitals, which might be saturated with students and residents. Smaller hospitals and rural hospitals often provide more opportunities for hands on training and procedures.

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I think attending a program directly affiliated with a teaching hospital is a huge plus. You have more opportunities to learn as well as be mentored. Additionally, I've found it makes for a much better experience with the patients. They know to expect bright eyed, bushy tail short coats who come in and get histories and listen to their murmurs when they step foot into an academic center. You also get the benefit of training with physicians who already have a working relationship with PAs and PA students. Makes for a much better experience to train with Doc's who know what a PA is and understand their role on the team.

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I applied to a school that had an affiliation and two that did not. I ultimately went to one that did not. At first, I was hot to go to the program at a medical school. I soon found that (a) they had few, if any, lectures or lecturers in common, and (b) the PA students had to fight their way to see a patient in the hospital due to competition with med students and residents.

While I'm sure there are PAs who went to affiliated programs and it went swimmingly, it apparently doesn't always. Most schools get good lecturers from their own faculty and local practitioners. Some schools have great rotations at local hospitals where people then seem to get jobs.

So, I guess my advice is to do your research. Picking an affiliated program is not automatically a good thing and choosing an unaffiliated one is not automatically a bad thing.

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My disclaimer is that I have yet to start my program at a large academic medical center associated school. There are several reasons that I chose the school I did as it relates to this topic. Firstly they have specialized tracks in a field that I am very interested in (Pediatric Critical Care) and secondly in talking with current students they had significantly better access to rotations in specialty areas that other schools I interviewed at did not. So with that said I think it depends a little bit on what area of medicine you want to end up in. If you are thinking some uber specialized area like Pediatric Solid Organ Transplant or something along those lines then it may benefit you to be at a larger medical center. Otherwise you are more than likely fine to go where ever your heart desires and you will find good rotations.

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Relationship with teaching hospital may help or hinder, ask current clinical students their experience.

This is an area that will see further scrutiny from ARC-PA over the next several years. PA students paying tens of thousands in tuition during the clinical year should not have clinical experiences that are tenuous and the experiences should enable the student to evolve towards becoming an entry level PA. Ad hoc scheduling and limited clinical experience opportunities, particularly in the core rotations, do not meet that requirement. The most important factor is not an association with a teaching hospital but rather a network of clinical experiences that meet the program expectations concerning the learning outcomes from attending the site. That takes both the site and the program to come to a mutual agreement of what the student will be experiencing and capable of post rotation.

Good luck.

George

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I went to an established, reputable program WITHOUT a teaching hospital affiliation.  We still got rotations at teaching hospitals, just not ones with PA programs.

For a newer program, I would be a lot more skeptical that quality rotations could be found, and I don't think enough people care about this: PANCE pass rates are objective, easy to measure, and utterly useless in determining who is actually becoming a good clinician during the program.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I went to a long-established program without a teaching hospital affiliation. At the end of my clinical year they were working on getting an agreement established, but it wasn't there when I was. I had fabulous rotations, better than those put together by the newer programs nearby (affiliated with academic medical centers).

When you go to interview or tour, talk with the students. Ask about their rotations. Ask how many of them didn't have a rotation set up the week before it was supposed to start, if any of them were with preceptors who had never taken a student before, etc.

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Guest HanSolo

My program is affiliated with a teaching institution/medical school and students rarely have rotations there because we would be with hoards of other students. Instead, we are at smaller, satellite hospitals, and are usually the only students there. No competition for procedures/patient access/etc. The academic resources we are given are outstanding, and I know this wouldn't be the case at a non-affiliated institution. The majority of our lecturers co-teach with the medical school but make things, in their words, more "clinically focused" for us. 

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