Design a good rotation schedule

The next form is an example of a rotation schedule. This is extremely important. This type of a schedule can be developed before the rotation begins. It’s provided to the students at the very beginning. It provides information to the students about what they should be doing every day. There’s information about when assignments are due, where the students should be at a given time. You may notice that the very bottom of the calendar. It tells the students that they have rounds every morning at eight o’clock. Then they meet with the preceptor every day at three o’clock. So they can be held accountable to be in those location. This is a scheduled for two students.

This is a basic templates with the five designed for students to be listed as a student A or student B. But it would be very easy to start of each rotation. Simply do a find and replace in Word and substitutes to student A for the student name and student B for the other students name. So using a template like this can easily be modified at the beginning of rotation. You can simply the student names and dates change to be more specific. You also see with this type of the schedule. It notifies the students that every Thursday, they’re going have to turn in their SOAP forms for evaluation.

So they know Wednesday is going to be a day to make sure their SOAPs are all well caught up. It also indicates that on Fridays, they will be taking memory quizzes, so they know to make sure they’re ready for those memory quizzes on Fridays. If you look at the Friday of the first week, it indicates that an inservice topic needs to be OK for student A. So they’re expected to give an in-service to a nursing unit. They have to come up with a topic and discuss with nurses what they might be interested in. To determine a good topic for that assignment. That needs to be approved by the preceptor by the first Friday.

You’ll notice on the third week on Monday enlisted student A has the in-service due. So with this schedule, the student knows that by Friday of the first week, they have to arrange a topic with the nursing station or inservice that they will be expected to have completed that inservice by Monday of the third week. This gives them some flexibility to arrange that inservice with the nursing staff. The bottom line is that this type of a schedule, especially if it’s printed as a calendar like this, makes it very clear to the students where they should be. When things are going to be done?

It helps them to plan out to make sure that they’re able to complete all the expectations by the set time. It’s also makes it much easier for the preceptor to communicate to students what the expectations are. So students aren’t constantly asking the preceptor what should I be doing today. The content of rotation manual syllabus is also a very important consideration. All the things that we’ve been talking about, various types of documentation forms, assessment tools, the instructions that students might need to complete a particular assignment, policies and procedures, should all be collated into a manual or syllabus that can be given to students.

Again, this prevents the needs for the preceptor to be providing this information constantly during the rotation, either verbally or otherwise. It makes it much less draining on the preceptor and it makes it easier for the preceptor to hold students accountable for this information. The types of information that you go into this manual or syllabus. First of all, the learning outcomes. That’s what everything revolves around and advanced practice experience rotation. So the learning outcomes need to be defined as the first step and the student should understand what those learning outcomes are. Students should understand the rotation requirements and assignment. Everything that he or she will be expected to do during the rotation. Whether it’s giving inservices, writing drug information, reports.

Whether is the SOAP of patients. All that should be clearly identified as to the requirements of successfully completing the rotation. Assessments and grading in practices. Students should understand very clearly how the grades will be determined. Any forms that used to assess an assignment or activity should be provided in the manual. Again, the value of these assessment tools is not only to guide the preceptor to grade fairly and objectively, but also to notify the student what’s important about these assignments. They can simply scan the assessment form, to see what the major criteria are and what the rating scale is and hopefully this will enable them to perform at a higher level and better achieve the expectations of the preceptor.

Policies and expectations should be very clear. Such policies is what time students should show up. How they should dress? What they should do if they’re going to be absent? Who they should contact and what the expectations are in terms of absences during the rotation. All these should be defined. And as we mentioned during the session two. What’s important is that if it’s at all possible, policies, procedures and expectations should be standardized, across the rotation for a given program. This enables students to become accustomed to the same types of policies from rotation to rotation. There’s less chance for misinterpretation because the policy in one rotation differs from a policy in the previous rotation.

Schedule or calendar of activities is also very important. It is presented an example of that. This can alleviate the burden on the preceptor and also provide more guidance to the students. And decrease the likelihood that a student might feel as though they don’t know what they should be doing at any given time. All forms that are used, an example should be provided. So students have access to it, whether it’s a monitoring form or an assessment form. They should receive a copy upfront. They can refer to at any time. The information about the site and unique information about the site, contact information is also very important.

Preceptor might want to supply a cellphone or some other means of contacting the preceptor or other people in the hospital or in the pharmacy department. That information should be provided to the students. And lastly, any resources or required readings that the students would find beneficial. If there are certain topics that students are going to be expected to dive into more detail, a particular disease state or a particular activity. To provide an article or some type of background information might be very useful. And that should be provided in the manual or the syllabus so the students have that information with them and with all the other information that’s been provided. And anything else that the preceptor thinks might be a value.

It is better to be safe than sorry and include that information in the manual. Oh, I’d like to show you an example from a manual. One of my past piv with consultants that come in and make recommendations about how things should be done. In this case, I’m providing guidances to how to construct a rotation. One of my past piv as consultants come in and they suggest a lot of work and certainly to put together a rotation. There’s a lot of work. Sometimes when I was a pharmacy director, I would wonder if the people consulting with us and telling us that all the work that we need to do, and they had never done it themselves.

Because it seems like if they had done it themselves, they wouldn’t suggest it to us. I’m providing you with suggestions about activities that I have engaged in myself. When I suggest that you prepare a manual, I prepared manuals for my rotation. And i’m going to show you as an example very first rotation manual that I put together in 1982. Because it was a lot of work. Not only did it include all the information we’ve been discussing, but back in 1982, my pharmacy did not have a personal computer. We didn’t get one until a couple of years later. And certainly, there was no such thing as Microsoft Word. Microsoft Office didn’t exist yet.

So the manuals back in 1982 had to be typewritten. So it was a lot more work. And it would be even for you today. This manual on the right illustrates the table of contents. You can see 17 pages of typewritten information that we provided to the students who came to the Medical College of Ohio rotations. We included independency detailed information about things like patient monitoring and the case presentation. But all this information that we’ve been talking about was provided in a manual. A lengthy manual, 17 pages plus many pages of appendices. So it was worth doing. It was a lot of work but it saved a lot of time down the road once students began the rotations.