Simplifying PA Clinical Education Management and Accreditation at South College Nashville

Hi, I'm Lisa Postell. I am with the South College Nashville Physician Assistant Program. I am the Director of Clinical Education where I've been for the past seven years. The South College Nashville PA program has a cohort of sixty people. We matriculated our first class in twenty nineteen. We have a very diverse group of faculty members and staff. We have been using CORE ELMS since day one. We use it in all aspects of the clinical year. So it really means a lot for our team to have preceptor onboarding and tracking via CORE. It saves a lot of time. It also helps us to manage things. So, for example, if the clinical administrator is not available, then I can go into CORE and find what I need and be able to do things in their absence. It also means that we are spending less time managing preceptors and spending more time helping the students to be successful, mentoring them while we're also managing the clinical here. Something that we found that was a real headache that CORE has helped us with has been being able to track the students' benchmarks. ArcPA, our credentialing body, requires us to be able to have proof that we're providing an adequate education to our students while they are experiencing across all age groups, genders, races, and being able to track those benchmarks easily from rotation to rotation has been very, very helpful. So our customer service representative helped us to create a online or digital application from something that we at South College Nashville already had, and that way we've been able to also link that information to specific requirements in the RPA fifth edition handbook. That has been really, really helpful because now we know we're meeting the criteria while getting the information that we need from our preceptors so that we can not only meet credentialing requirements but also have the information we need to have on our preceptors to know that they are also qualified to instruct our students during their clinical year. CORE helped us because we were able to gather the documentation that they required, not just about the preceptors, but about the facilities themselves, proving that we're doing site visits, proving that we're continually updating our information, making sure that all documentation is current, not expired, being able to create reports that we could give to the ARC visitors and then be able to see that again we're meeting the requirements for the fifth edition for ARC. The thing that stood out most in my experience working with the CORE team was the customer service. I felt like I could shoot an email at any time and at the very least they would say, saw your email, we're working on it. Our students and preceptors have very positive responses to the use of core. Using CORE makes it easier for our preceptors to be able to submit their information to us and keeping it somewhere where everyone who's on the clinical team can management. They also are able to complete evaluations digitally. Students, use CORE and appreciate that they're able to see everything about their clinical year in one spot. Their schedule look at requirements for upcoming rotations, use SmartMatch so that we know their preferences, they utilize SiteProspect so that they could suggest preceptors of facilities to us so that they could start building their network for after graduation. The advice that I give another program that's considering core is sit down and think about what you need and then talk to the representatives. They will make sure that you promptly get the information that you need and you will feel like you're working with a team.