External Rotations

Something we've been looking forward to our entire time in optometry school is 4th year.  Not only is it the last year we'll be doing this, it's also the year James gets to do external rotations or Preceptorships, they're called.  They are mostly external, meaning they are all over the U.S. and Canada, even in Germany and Asia.  There are also some internal rotations, but we'll be trying to avoid those.  

So, Rotations.  It's exciting and dreadful at the same time.  It's complicated and it can be a gamble.  We've been listening to others talk about picking there sites and where everybody ended up and so forth for over 2 years now.  

Finally it's our turn!  We got our list of 113 preceptorship sites, that's not including the internals.  Some of them are right out for us because we're not single or we're not Canadian or we don't speak Korean.  So that helps narrow things down a little bit.  

So what I did was made a list of all the sites we're interested in and just for fun (and to help explain it) I put them all on a map of the U.S. 

It's complicated because there are different kinds of site, represented by different colors.  James has to go to at least one BLUE or Primary Care site, and at least one RED or Ocular Disease site and then there's a GREEN and PURPLE.  He can do just one of those or both if he wants.  Or he can do another Blue or Red instead of the other Green or Purple one he'd be lacking, or he can do an ORANGE, which is an internal rotation.  Like I said, it's complicated.

Internal rotations are the clinics that are in the area and affiliated in some way with Pacific University, I believe.  There are 32 internal spots that have to be filled.  The students can volunteer for those sites, but if not enough people volunteer, than they start randomly choosing people.  

The risk is that if you don't volunteer for an internal you might like, than you could get stuck with one nobody else wanted either.  You could also get stuck with it being a middle rotation.  For example, you move away to do your 1st rotation and then have to move back to Forest Grove for your 2nd rotation and then away again for your 3rd and 4th rotation.  So everyone wants to do their internal as a 1st rotation or not at all.  

There are 4 sessions for rotations, 3 months each.  A few rotations are 2 sessions long or 6 months, but we're not interested in any of them.  What James IS interested in is Ocular Disease.  So we tried to find the sites that will offer the most of that.  

Each site has a page of information that tells us the percentage of Primary Care, Contact Lenses, Ocular Disease, etc. that the practice sees.  It might tell a few other things too, like the days and hours of the clinic or that they will be splitting their time between 2 clinics, or that they will have to present a case study or a paper, etc. 

 So for the BLUE, Primary Care sites, we've narrowed it down to our 5 favorites, in hardly any particular order:
1. Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany.
     (near the border of Germany & France), because Germany would just be way cool!


2. Northeastern Tribal Health in Miami, Oklahoma.  Yes, there really is a Miami, Oklahoma.  It's in the very North East corner of Oklahoma, about 1/2 hour from Missouri.  

3. Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.  It's basically on the outskirts of Washington D.C.  How amazing would that be.  The kids and I would constantly be gone on field trips.

4. United States Air Force Academy Hospital in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  

5. Eye Care Group in Grants Pass, Oregon.  It's a "teaching clinic,"  whatever that means.  I thought they were all teaching and learning, that's kind of the point.  

So there's our Plan A - E for BLUE, which we're told is a good idea to have.

 For the RED Ocular Disease sites, we like:
1.Lebanon VA Medical Center Eye Clinic in Lebanon,  Pennsylvania (only 1/2 hour from Hersey, PA.  I see more field trips in our future if we end up here). 


2. Ophthalmic Consultants of CT in Fairfield, Connecticut.  


3. Lexington VAMC in Lexington, Kentucky.  


4. Sierra Nevada Health Care System VA in Reno, Nevada.  


5. Lake Havasu City, Arizona. 

And for the GREEN, Other Specialty, we're thinking:
1. Bandon, Oregon.  James would have to work in 2 different clinics, one in Bandon and the other in Coquille.  


2. Riverbend Eye Care in Bend, Oregon.


3. Dixie Eye Care in St. George, Utah.  (Hopefully this one won't be during the summer months, if we ended up here). 


4. Archdale Eyecare in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

As far as PURPLE OD/MD Co-Mgmt goes, it's mostly surgery.  James isn't interested in doing surgery, so even though we chose a couple of sites (that don't do surgery) we probably won't end up with these:
1. Hoopes Vision in Salt Lake City, Utah 

2. Retina Institute of Hawaii in Honolulu.  (Bummer)!

There are also some sites in Utah that would be great places for James, but Utah is generally very popular.  All the students who are members of the church want to go there.  So we're trying to avoid the Utah sites.  They'll go to lottery and we could lose.  I hope we don't have to lottery too much.  It's so stressful.  If we lose, then we're scrambling to find another place.  

The one thing I've decided though, looking through these sites, is that there are so many good ones.  It was hard to narrow it down to the ones we did choose.  So I think, I hope, that no matter what happens we'll be happy and we'll have a grand adventure and James will gain all the experience he needs.

The whole lottery and selecting process will take a couple of weeks.  Wish us luck!  

 Where do you think we should go?