Background
The worsening healthcare worker shortage doesn’t just make it harder for patients to access quality care, it makes it near impossible for future healthcare professionals to receive the training they need to complete their clinical rotations.
Like many higher educational institutions across the country, Dominican University of California was experiencing a preceptor shortage. In order to ensure students could meet their clinical objectives and graduate on time, Dominican University a sought a solution that allowed students who were unable to travel to still participate fully in their clinical rotations.
Challenge
Dominican University faced specific difficulties in securing mental health placements for its Physician Assistant (PA) students, which is a critical component of their clinical education. Additionally, the program was experiencing a general preceptor shortage across multiple specialties, which created challenges in meeting the clinical objectives necessary for students to graduate on time.
Solution
MomentMD proposed a hybrid approach that integrated telemedicine into the clinical rotations for Dominican’s PA students, focused on alleviating these shortages without compromising the quality of clinical education.
The primary elements of this solution were:
- Telemedicine Precepting for Mental Health: Students participated in at least 50% of their mental health rotations through telemedicine, ensuring they could meet their clinical hour requirements despite the limited availability of in-person preceptors.
- Expansion to Other Specialties: In addition to mental health, this telemedicine approach was extended to other specialties such as women’s health, pediatrics, and family medicine. This flexibility ensured that students across all disciplines had access to high-quality clinical rotations.
- Rotation Scheduling Flexibility: The solution included a rotational system in which students would alternate between in-person and telemedicine-based experiences. For example, half of the students would begin in-person while the other half engaged in telemedicine, and then they would switch. This allowed the program to better utilize limited in-person preceptor availability while maximizing clinical training opportunities.
These strategies were proposed to directly address the preceptor shortage, while ensuring that Dominican University’s PA students received a well-rounded clinical education. Telemedicine was identified as an ideal solution for mental health due to the nature of care delivery in this field, and it proved adaptable to other specialties. The rotational model allowed the program to optimize available resources and ensure all students could progress quickly.
Results
The collaboration between Dominican University and MomentMD has been highly successful. So far, 57 students have been placed across four different rotations, accounting for nearly 7,000 clinical hours. These telemedicine rotations have allowed students to stay on track with their graduation timelines, even amid a challenging preceptor landscape.
Looking ahead
The success of the telemedicine integration has demonstrated the importance of flexibility in clinical education.
Based on the success of the telemedicine integration, future plans include adding AI-driven tools to further enhance the students’ learning environment. These tools will be designed to simulate real-world healthcare scenarios, providing students with additional hands-on experience and preparing them to use AI-based applications in their clinical practice.
Interested in learning how MomentMD can augment your clinical education experience for students? Get in touch with us here.