Purpose The purpose of this study was to assess physician assistant (PA) students' perceptions of using a pediatric urgent care clinic for their pediatric acute care experience.Methods PA students were surveyed on completion of their pediatric urgent care rotations (June 2017 to March 2020). Positive perception was $4 on a 5-point scale or $80% on agreement for dichotomous variables. Qualitative question responses were open coded for positive themes and opportunities for improvement.
ResultsOf the 32 students, 29 (90.6%) completed evaluations. Students reported an overall positive perception: patient care, 4.66 (standard deviation [SD] 0.61); system-based practice, 4.76 (SD 0.44); professionalism, 4.90 (SD 0.31); medical knowledge, 4.90 (SD 0.31); and practice-based learning and improvement, 4.66 (SD 0.61). However, interpersonal and communication skills were rated positively on only 65.5% of the evaluations.Conclusions An academic pediatric urgent care clinic was regarded positively by PA students as a novel setting to complete a pediatric acute care rotation, but students required more opportunities to work collaboratively.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.