Long hours with few patients

[Rcamps24]

In my current rotation, I’m seeing about 5-10 patients daily over 8-9 hour shifts, averaging around 7 patients per day. My first rotation was in family medicine, and now I’m in an elective, with both settings having a similar patient load. I’m curious if this is typical for a PA student during rotations. Should I be concerned about not seeing enough patients and consider reporting it to my clinical director, or is it better to just make use of the downtime to study and enhance my learning independently? Would appreciate any insights or experiences from others in similar situations.

[ohiovolffemtp]

Several thoughts:

• That patient load is low.  It would be much better if you saw more patients to get exposed to a wider variety of conditions.
• You should use the extra time to study, both independently and to ask your preceptors to explain/teach you things.  First, ask if they're willing to spend extra time with you.  Then, each shift come in with a list of questions/topics to go over, especially ones related to patients you saw or topics that will be on your end of rotation exam.
• Mention the low patient volume on your end of rotation review.  In the short term, it's not likely your clinical director can do much, as it is difficult to find sites and preceptors.

[thinkertdm]

I agree with the above, but need to add- given the low patient load, hopefully you are using the “extra time” to learn more about the disease process, differentials, potential presentation of each, complications, treatments, alternative treatments…

once you are in real life, getting the time to dig deep into those diseases is a luxury you most likely can’t afford, especially when you are at 20-30 patients a day, so don’t be upset you aren’t seeing more- quality in this case may be more educational than quantity.  use your time now to learn as much as you can about each one.  
 

also, if you are looking for more, ask around.  There is likely someone who could use a break and you could see some of their patients.
 

[SedRate]

Good advice above. Ask other PAs/MDs in the practice if you can work with them. I did this on some of the slow days in Ob/Gyn and I got to scrub in on some cool surgeries and saw more Gyn Onc.