Away Elective Rotation Overview
Objective

An R-3 Away Elective is offered to provide residents with clinical or research experience at sites remote from Seattle. This experience will give residents additional training in areas pertinent to their future practice of medicine. There is no expectation that all residents are entitled to an away elective.  The rotation must be one that does not have a equivalent experience available locally.  The rotation is a maximum of 4 weeks.  Vacation may be taken during the elective month.   Residents must demonstrate that they will achieve the required number of clinic visits per the program requirements.  If an away elective is taken early in the year and clinical volumes are not adequate, the residents will need to exchange an elective month for a clinic month to meet the program requirements.

Criteria

  • Educational content, objectives, supervision, expected future practice value, and evaluation format are pre-approved by a majority of the faculty.

  • A draft of the resident’s proposal is presented to the mentor faculty member at least 2 months in advance, 4 months if going out of state where licensing may be an issue.  If not enough time is allowed to properly set up the rotation, then it will be exchanged with a clinic month or other local elective.  

  • The final proposal is presented to the faculty and chief residents by the resident at least 6 weeks in advance of the rotation month and approved by the faculty at least 1 months in advance of the rotation month.

  • A report will be required at the conclusion of the away rotation.  This can be done as a presentation either in didactics or a case conference.

  • Only one R-3 may schedule an Away Rotation per month from each clinic site. The date that the request is submitted determines priority for the requested month.

  • The CLINIC CHIEF at each site schedules each clinic’s staffing during the away rotations to maintain clinic productivity. R-3 residents will be expected to help cover staffing when other R-3s are on away electives.

  • No Away Rotations may be scheduled during the month of July due to the transition of new residents into the Family Medicine Residency Program.


CMS requires that the preceptor (s) at the site not be on a straight salary position from a hospital. They can be paid on a production basis or be owners of a private practice and not be reimbursed for their teaching time (as they gain in personal productivity by the R3 assisting in seeing patients). Otherwise, if they are on a salaried position, the preceptor would have to be paid for their teaching time which is not within our budget to do so without external funding.

The Training Agreement is completed between Swedish Family Medicine and the hosting Practice Physician or Designee.