Trouble getting placed for internships

[BlueBlue8]

I'm curious how successful and efficient other schools are at placing their students for extended off-site internships. Does everyone receive notice of their placement status early enough to set up a living situation? The reason why I ask is because I've heard fourth term students at my school mention that they haven't been placed for their first internship yet....which starts in a month! While the majority of students do get placement confirmations during their 3rd term, some people find out a week or so before they have to be somewhere. Is this the norm?

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[dizzy88]

Wow, I could not imagine! We choose our internships a year in advance. Usually takes a couple months to hear back for sure. I already know for certain that my spot is secured for next summer.

Some students who want to go out of state must be prepared to have a back up choice, especially if they want to go to California or New York or something where there are so many programs in the area. Facilities will typically give preference to local students.

 

[Akiramay]

I definitely don't think that's the norm! Our clinical sites are confirmed many months before we start. Our clinical directors send out applications to sites asking how many placements they are interested in offering the students, so when we choose where we want to go, the site is pretty much set in stone. Our school has a well-structured way of handling it all.

 

[TraumaPT]

No, this is not the norm. Physical therapy training is in a time of transition.

With the change of degree from MS to DPT, affils have gotten longer, which means we clinical sites can accept fewer students in any given year. My site went from an average of 20 eight-week affils to 15 twelve-week affils. Same amount of CI time, fewer students.

In addition, a number of new PT schools are preparing to come online, and they will be competing for slots with established programs.

This is why your ACCE/DCE may be looking quite frazzled. They, too, like to have the assignments all sewn up nice and early.

So save a little compassion for your faculty - they are just as stressed as the students who can't make housing arrangements!

 

[thorn22]

For our final 2 (16-week) clinicals, we do a lottery process to pick our sites.

To give you a timeline, on June 29th we will be having the lottery where we will pick our first clinical which is from September-December and also our second clinical which is from January-May.