The meeting was called to order at 11:43 AM.

The minutes were approved as distributed.

Grant Proposal to Center for Study of Oral Disparities

Dr. McCutcheon, WVU School of Dentistry, is applying for a NIH grant to fund a Center for Oral Health Disparities in Appalachia. This is an eleven million-dollar grant in conjunction with the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt). The proposal for this grant is due in November and is being cast in the framework of the rural health program. The rural health rotation concept will be available to the Pitt students as an elective. University of Pittsburgh will be responsible for developing affiliation agreements with the local sites and financially supporting housing and all logistics. Dr. Ferrari called for input from the Site Coordinators in terms of scheduling extra dental students. Carla Campbell stated that she would love to have them since she gets very few dental students. WVU School of Dentistry students will schedule WVU Dental students in TRACKER first and then inform University of Pittsburgh students of available sites (implementing the out-of-state policy). Each consortium will have a separate affiliation agreement with University of Pittsburgh. Dr. McCutcheon made a motion allowing University of Pittsburgh dental students to rotate at RHEP sites coordinated through the WVU School of Dentistry in conjunction with the Oral Health and Appalachian Communities grant proposal. Carla Campbell seconded the motion and motion was unanimously approved.

Streamlining Faculty Appointments

April Vestal referred to a memo from Hilda in 1993 regarding field faculty appointments and contacts from schools. There is a need for a mechanism to make the field faculty appointments more available and the school list of contacts needs to be updated. Brenda Michael stated that the site coordinators can contact her regarding faculty appointments. April Vestal will contact JoAnn Raines to see if a contact person can do the same at Marshall University. Hilda Heady noted that we do not have a policy on field faculty appointments but there is a reciprocity agreement. April Vestal and Dr. Ferrari will present a document stating the procedure for field faculty appointments and the reciprocity agreement at the next meeting.

ROVER Dentistry Issue

ROVER Consortium Board and Dentists voted to drop Dentistry as a discipline because they could not agree on finances. Mediation had been offered but not accepted. RHEP is striving to have all disciplines at all sites. The School Committees concern: Can a consortium drop any discipline? The only reason for dropping a discipline is if you clearly think through the needs and decide you do not need this discipline. If ROVER is offering fewer disciplines, why would they continue to get the same funding? A motion was made asking Hilda Heady to take this issue of loss of funds to the ROVER Administration.

Drs. Ferrari made the motion and Dr. Bors seconded. Motion carried.
 
 
 
 

Faculty Development Day Conference (Snowshoe Oct. 6-7, 2000)

Dr. Meckstroth, Nancy Dunn, and Imogene Foster will discuss on-site clinical coordinator (OSCD) positions at the Faculty Development Conference. Some sites have funded positions for OSCD and others do not. It was suggested that there should be a dialogue between the people in the field and the School Committee in order to decide what we think is the role of the OSCD. Patti Crawford stated that local boards need to empower this position. Mike McCarthy asked if the School Committee has obtained a commitment from the site coordinators to denote the preceptor of record on TRACKER, or would this be optional. The committee feels site coordinators should be required to denote the preceptor of record because primary preceptors issue the final grade. Jacquelynn Copenhaver, site coordinator, added that when a rotation site is denoted, the preceptor of record should also be denoted. Mike McCarthy conveyed that the planned primary preceptor can be noted, verified, and changed during the monthly report. An alternative would be to use the narrative comments field in advance of the rotation and ask to make the official notification on the monthly report after the rotation is complete. A motion was made for the site coordinators to add in the comments section of TRACKER the name of the specific preceptor (Bors/Crawford). Dr. Ferrari asked Jacquelynn Copenhaver and Carla Campbell to bring this up at the site coordinators meeting on Tuesday. There was a suggestion that guidelines be made regarding a time frame of change - Site coordinators notifying the school schedulers as soon as possible.

Mike's clarifications are as follows:

1. School and students would like to know with whom and where ASAP in advance to solve this, site coordinators are encouraged to make use of the narrative comments field.
2. Need for academic purposes the preceptor responsible for grades
3. Add a pull down field on monthly report preceptor of record (The name of person to present the FINAL grade).

A request for Immunization & OSHA training information to be provided to the sites. If this information is already provided on the students to work on campus through the University, then it should suffice for rural rotations. Dr. Bors suggested a blanket letter be sent from each school to the site coordinators or one letter signed by all schools/and or disciplines. Requirements among all schools must be coordinated.

Dr. Bors suggested the letter state that any student in good standing will have had their Immunizations and OSHA training requirements. Jacquelynn Copenhaver will bring this up at the site coordinator meeting on Tuesday. Steve Thomas, via Dr.Bors, asked that a class list, with pictures, be sent to the site coordinators before the students arrival along with the students email address would be very helpful.

Hilda Heady informed the school committee that the special projects committee approved RHEP funding to be used with other grant funding for serious long term evaluation students attitudes and graduates attitudes, etc. about rural practice. The long-term evaluation group consists of Ken Shannon of WVU; Helen Baker of WVSOM, Mike McCarthy of Marshall University and the consultant working with this group is Don Pathman, with the Ships Rural Health Research Center of the University of North Carolina. Don Pathman is conducting research on what it takes to build rural practitioners. This group is working closely with the evaluation committee, which is their advisory body to their process throughout their IRBs, etc. This group would like the school committee to help improve the response rate from students. The average response rate is 37% to this point statewide. The students field experience evaluation will be filled out electronically via the website. Mike McCarthy informed the committee that there is ability to check the evaluation for completion and to notify school/academic offices to contact the student and inform him/her to complete the evaluation. Paper evaluations are now being completed with a very low response rate. If we go electronic, and get no feedback, there is an automatic flash to indicate one has not completed their evaluation with a cc to the campus coordinator. Email addresses must be in TRACKER for this to be done automatically. This must also be a requirement at the end of the rotation. If schools are willing to support the site coordinators and RHEP in making this a requirement, this will be implemented. Some are supportive of this provided the evaluation is solely electronic. Medicine will be first in implementing the evaluation and those students will be contacted again after graduation. Eventually all disciplines will be doing an electronic evaluation. There will only be one pre-evaluation during clinical orientation at the end of June. Hilda is willing to support to make this a requirement for RHEP credit. Those present are in full agreement to support this in order to get RHEP credit [WVU and WVSOM yes; Marshall representative absent (Dentistry yes, Medicine yes, Nursing yes)]. Pretesting implementation electronically will take place this fall in October. There is an anticipation of IRB approval in October. Field-testing was done today among the Student Advisory Panel. WVU clinical presentation is the last couple days of June. Site Coordinators need to present this at student orientation. Carla will present at the site coordinator meeting in regards to scheduling an exit interview at the students orientation at the sites.

There must be assurance that the evaluation will in no way jeopardize a student's grade or class standing. This is to be done as part of a student's requirement. Confidentiality is maintained but not anonymity. No credit will be given unless this form, which is two or three pages long and a timeline of approximately 30 minutes, is completed. The committee needs to find out university-schools protocol for rights of privacy and see if there is any conflict. If this is taken care of, the committee will be fully supportive. Mike will send out a list of students'names for which rotation evaluations have not been completed.

Meeting adjourned at 1:30 PM