In late 2014, a nurse practitioner student called us seeking a 144-hour Pediatric clinical rotation.
She told us she’d been searching for over 3 months without success, and time was of the essence. It had gotten so bad that she was on the verge of tears...
Why? Because her preceptor canceled a rotation she had already set up! To make matters worse, her university couldn’t help, and as a result, she felt alone in this process. We thought to ourselves, “All she needs is a pediatric rotation.” At the time, we placed MD students in these rotations all the time, and this time was no different.
The same day, we called the student back with a solution: two different Pediatric clinical rotation options ready for her! She chose one in Lawrenceville, GA, just a few minutes away from her house. She thought it was a trick until she reported to the rotation. The best part? We completed and submitted her paperwork to her school in less than 3 days. It felt incredible to help her, but we thought it was just a one-time thing. Then, shortly after, 1 student turned into 2, which quickly turned 10. We quickly realized our initial assumption was wrong. We naturally assumed NP students had support in finding and scheduling clinical rotations because all other healthcare students had this support. However, we were wrong. We spent 18 months in 2015 and 2016 meeting with NP programs around the country and consistently heard the same three things:
We don’t have the budget in our program!
Our students might struggle, but they always figure it out.
This is how it’s always been done and how it’ll always be done
The last university we spoke with in 2016 was the last straw.
Our founder, Krish Chopra, received an unexpected call from an Associate Dean of an NP program in Delaware, who said: “You’re not needed here. This is how it’s always been done, and this is how it will stay. You guys are wasting your time.”
This was obviously a blow and massively disheartening. It took some time, but fast-forward eight months, and we decided to switch to helping students directly.
We made this monumental shift in March 2017…