Shortened clinical rotations

[ThrowawayPAS]

I'm a class of 2022 student starting clinical rotations soon. Last month faculty notified the class that all of our rotations will be shortened from 5 weeks to ~2-2.5 weeks. We were told that this absolutely will not change throughout the year. So, even our last rotations in January/February 2022 will be cut short. 

This is obviously disappointing and a huge loss for our education. Faculty gave the reasoning that even if we could go to full-length rotations, it wouldn't be fair for the entire class if certain rotations were short and other people got the full 5 weeks. They also said that this is an ARC-PA issue, but I'm unable to find any information on that.  For the record, the entire class is fully vaccinated for COVID

Any input from other programs?

[TheFatMan]

Not the case at mine. 8 week rotations here.

[TheFatMan]

Also...that is absurd. Are you in a hotspot or something?

[ThrowawayPAS]

No, I wouldn't consider this area to be a hotspot. The COVID rates around here are fairly low, compared to the US averages and other counties in the state. 

[Bf555]

You’re required a certain amount of weeks and hours. I’m not sure how that’s allowed unless arc-pa changed standards. Unacceptable

[roundabout]

This sounds sketchy.

[ANESMCR]

Agree. This is absolutely unacceptable and unheard of. I would assume you are being refunded 50% of your tuition? A lot of that goes to setting up your rotations

[NicoleJo]

Our rotations got reduced from five weeks to four due to Covid but nothing that severe...

[hmtpnw]

Started clinicals in August 2020. Not a single one of my rotations has been shortened due to COVID. 

[nichole96]

We had a delayed start to rotations (late June instead of May) so ours have been 5 weeks instead of 6 to make up the time. The class below us is going back to 6 weeks. The 2.5 week rotations sound bananas - I'm still learning everyone's names during week 2 and can't imagine switching sites so frequently. 

[CAAdmission]

This is absurd. 2 weeks? You need to write your university's president. And have your parents do so, too.

[kelzie]

I'm surprised that this would be allowed. I graduated May 2020 - there was a lot of concern surrounding what to do about our last few rotations due to the full shutdowns at that time. My understanding from my program was that ARC-Pa requires the school to follow the # of hours/expectations set in your program's program manual at the time of the program's accreditation. My school was able to accommodate us with virtual rotations for our last couple due to how the requirements were written out "competencies" rather than specific hours. However, we still had the same 4 week rotations as usual - it was just done online instead. I'm not sure how your program can say that you will become competent in any area within just 2 weeks. Coordinating many of the required procedures sometimes took a few weeks to schedule, even for observation only ones. Many of my rotations, the first week was basically getting oriented/meeting everyone-second week seeing just a couple patients per day with gradually increasing as the rotation went on.