ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Competition for clinical education sites is a known challenge for academic programs in allied health education with clinical sites reporting a variety of reasons for declining to participate in clinical education. In 2022, the Clinical Education Task Force (now Clinical Education Committee, CEC) of the Association of Schools Advancing Health Professions embarked on a project with the objective of creating an evidence-based resource that could be used by multiple professions to support the case for site participation in clinical education. METHODS: A literature search was conducted to identify contemporary published works on the positive impact of student clinical education placements on clinical sites. The publications were reviewed and four overarching themes were identified: students add value, productivity, preceptor perception, and patient perception. RESULTS: A one-page infographic was created to feature the four identified themes. A QR code embedded into the infographic links to the citations on which the themes are based. CONCLUSION: The one-page resource created by the CEC can be used to frame conversations about participation in clinical education, elevating the assertion of benefits from anecdotal to published-based claims. The resource is dynamic, as it can be updated continually as new information emerges and other information becomes outdated.
Subject(s)
Schools , Students , Humans , Educational Status , Advisory Committees , CommunicationABSTRACT
Hospitals often depend on rotating students to fulfill their educational missions, meet clinical needs, and develop a pipeline for workforce needs. Strategies to match clinical rotations offered with the hospital's hiring needs are often haphazard or even overlooked. This report proposes a new index--the HOT Index (for "Hired, Open, Trained")--to help match training with hiring of allied health students in academic medical centers. The index values generated range from 0 to 1, depending on the degree of alignment among the three variables considered. To evaluate performance of the index, data were compiled for health sciences clinical education rotations offered in three professions in the years 2017 to 2019 and for three more professions in 2019 alone. The index was assessed by application in scenarios with varying degree of mismatch among the variables of training provided, open positions, and students hired. Analysis of several professions over time confirmed the responsiveness of the HOT Index to fluctuating conditions. Based on preliminary analysis of its performance, the HOT Index appears to be responsive to matching of training and hiring in allied health programs, thereby enhancing sustainability and efficiency of allied health clinical training programs in academic medical centers.
