Clinical Placement Procedure
| AC-OCE-PRO-006 Clinical Placement Procedure | |
|---|---|
| Department | Academic |
| Approval Date | June 28, 2018 |
| Effective Date | September 4, 2018 |
Purpose
The purpose of the procedure is to provide a timely, transparent and fair method of establishing and assigning student clinical placements to meet the educational requirements of their programs.
The goal of the procedure, barring any exceptional circumstance, is to ensure students are notified of the location of their clinical placements three months prior to the start of their placements.
Procedure
- A representative from the Office for Clinical Education (OCE) will hold sessions to review the clinical placement policy, procedure and pre-clinical requirements. At that time, programs will be notified of the semester in which the clinical placement procedure will occur.
- It is a professional expectation that students must declare any potential conflict of interest to the OCE that may exist for them at any clinical site. A conflict of interest is defined as, but not limited to, a family member or close friend of the student who has the potential of supervising and/or evaluating that student or who may have influence on the student’s placement or progression in the clinical phase of the program. The OCE will investigate the potential conflict of interest and make a final decision with respect to placing the student at that site.
- The OCE will establish the expected number of clinical placements required organizationally for the cohorts of students entering their clinical semester(s).
- Although recruitment of clinical sites is on-going, the OCE will continue it’s recruitment until there are sufficient placements for each student. Once the clinical sites for a program have been confirmed, the Office for Clinical Education:
- Groups the clinical sites into regions and prepares the on-line system
- Provides the students with access to the on-line clinical placement system where they can view the available sites for their program by region along with the number of placement allocations per region.
- Prior to the region selections, the OCE will provide a demonstration of the on-line system for the students and also issue instructions to the students via email on how to access and use the on-line clinical placement application system. The students will be instructed to rank the regions according to their preferences by the deadline provided.
- The on-line clinical placement system is a 3-step procedure. In the first 2 steps, students rank and/or re-rank the regions in order of preference and the system will match students with their first choice where possible.
- The 3rd and final step is an electronic lottery that matches each student who is not assigned a region in the first 2 steps to a region with available spots based on their rankings and the rest of the cohort.
Should there be a failure at any point of the on-line clinical placement application system, then students will be required to submit their rankings in writing to the OCE. Should there be a failure in the electronic random ballot, the OCE will conduct a draw in the presence of the Program Clinical Liaison Officer (CLO) or designate.
All regional assignments are final.
Following the completion of the on-line clinical placement process, the OCE will assign the students to one of the clinical sites within their confirmed regions. Students will not be placed at a clinical site where a confirmed conflict of interest exists or cannot be resolved. These clinical site assignments are final and will be forwarded to each site Clinical Coordinator via email and copied to the students and the program CLO.
