How UNMC Launched a Clinical Placement System Faculty Actually Use

Good afternoon, everyone. Hello. Hello. We could give it, just, I think, another moment or two just to let everybody get in, and then we'll start off with introductions. Sounds good. Alright. Hello, everyone. Welcome. Good afternoon. We are giving, folks a few just another minute or two to join. So while we're getting started, thank you all for spending part of your day with us. We know how busy everybody is, especially with the spring term starting this week or next week as well, so we really appreciate everybody being here. So today's webinar title, how UNMC launched a clinical placement system faculty actually use, came from ongoing conversations we've had with programs navigating very similar challenges. One, some are exploring what it would take to move away from older systems or manual processes or just endless spreadsheets. Or two, others already using ELMS and are now looking for ways to unlock even more value, especially by helping faculty leverage the tools already available to them. So the conversation today is about making that transition field doable. So, you will hear how Sarah and her team help faculty understand the value, made smart choices about where to start, and built buy in over time. So, some quick introductions. First, my name is Colin Trainor. I am a director of strategic accounts here at People Grove, and I'm joined today by Sarah Dawson, director of clinical placement at the University of Nebraska Medical Center's College of Nursing. So, Sarah, I'll hand it over to you. Hey. Thanks for the introduction, Colin. I serve as the director of clinical placement at the University of Nebraska Medical Center's College of Nursing. Other programs here at our university have been using core e l m ELMS since twenty twenty, and we've been using the core e l ELMS since twenty twenty three to support our clinical education operations from placements to evaluations, and I'll be walking through what led us to use core e ELMS, how we rolled it out, and what's worked for our team so far. Awesome. So to give a little context before we get into UNMC's story, CORE and the CORE technology suite by PeopleGrowth have been supporting experiential education since two thousand six. We started in pharmacy, and since twenty fourteen, we've grown into nursing, PA, and other health programs with nursing now being one of our largest focus areas, and it has been for the last couple of years. So today, we serve more than six hundred programs across over two hundred institutions. And one thing we're really proud of on the the core side here or the core ELMS side is how ELMS helps clinical programs save up to ten hours per week on average with a ninety eight percent retention rate. We really focus on building long term high trust partnerships. So today, what we're gonna go through in the next twenty five minutes, we're gonna talk a little bit about how UNMC brought faculty into the system and what made that successful, how they simplified communication with preceptors and students, and how ELMS fits into their everyday workflows in nursing programs and where teams are seeing the biggest time savings and adoption gains. And we'll also leave some time at the end, for questions, so feel free to drop those in the q and a box as we go, and we'll keep an eye on them. And at the end, as we have, time for questions, we'll go through them. So without oops. Sorry. Jumped a little bit too far. So without further ado, I will hand it to Sarah to talk a little bit about UNMC as a whole. So a little bit more about UNMC. Our college of nursing has been around since nineteen seventeen. We offer offer full a full range of programs, traditional accelerated BSN, RN to BSN, the MSN program, and DNP. With our students across programs and campuses, we have five divisions. We needed a system that could centralize our clinical processes and support scale, and that's what led us to to core ELMS. So the challenges that we've had, it was managing clinical placements was one of our biggest ones. We were managing multiple programs at different sites and student preferences in an outdated system. We had, we needed visibility and consistency without making the process harder for our faculty or students. The other challenge that we had was the affiliation agreements. It was another main point that we had a challenge with tracking the renewals, knowing where things stood, avoiding last minute scrambles was difficult without a centralized system. It was very time consuming and a and largely reactive. The challenge the third challenge that we had was the faculty buy in and training. The faculty buy in was very critical. Many were already managing heavy workloads, and we didn't want any implementing we didn't want implementing a new system to feel like one more thing. So our focus became helping faculty understand why the system mattered and how it could actually make their day to day work easier. Challenge four, excuse me, preceptor communication and student evaluations. Preceptor communication and evaluations were happening everywhere, emails, PDFs, spreadsheets. We needed a way to simplify evaluations and make it easier for preceptors to engage without adding friction. So what made it work? What worked for us was starting small and being intentional. We didn't roll everything out at once. We focused on high impact workflows first, offered short and focused training, and shared wins early, especially when faculty saved time or avoided manual steps. So can you, tell me a little bit more, Sarah, about the impact ELMS has had on your team? The impact has been significant. We've have seen an increase in faculty adoption, more consistent processes, and fewer manual workarounds. So I wanna pause here and ask something we hear a lot from programs considering a rollout like this. Like, what did the what did the faculty really think? Because this is a new rollout. It's a new platform that they're being told. This is something that we're rolling into. So what were their were their real thoughts? And I know you mentioned adoption increasing, but was there a moment when things really clicked for them? Like, when, they really started to pick it up that you could see the perception went from, like, this is another system that we just have to switch to or we're adopting for whatever reason to, oh, this is a platform that they actually wanna use it. They're gonna see, oh, this is gonna make things easier for us. So once the faculty saw how easy evaluations were, especially using a QR code on their phones, the hesitation started to disappear. They began to see core not as extra work, but as a tool that made their day smoother. Also, the students appreciated being able to track hours and complete evaluations from their phones, and our team spends far less time chasing paperwork and chasing preceptors to complete evaluations. That's great. Finally, what does in your experience, what does support actually look like? So I know we talked a little bit about dedicated support. But from your perspective, what did that feel like during the onboarding process and beyond? We had mentioned, like, consistent contact, having a response team, clear training sessions. Any questions that they had, we brought them up front before everything was finalized when we went in live with Core. So we let them play with it for a little while. We sold it. I guess you can say, like, look. You don't have to use this platform and do it this way, which takes you twice as long. The information is sent this way. Or our forms that we're required to send to our preceptors, you're it's like a one stop shop messaging center. Everything's done in core. We let them know ahead of time, like, hey. You're going to get a email that says no reply at core. Keep that safe. And once they started to get, oh, this is easy. Confirm hours. Click. It was great. Yeah. That's a common one too that I've heard from a lot of other campuses is, oh, the faculty don't need to worry about another login. They can if they want, but if it just becomes another username and password they need to worry about, if they can do everything by email. Same thing for the preceptors too where they may not be logging in, like, daily the way students are, but if they can, just get an email that tells them exactly what they need to do, oh, click here to confirm hours, Click here to confirm case logs. Click here to complete the evaluations. Those kinds of things making their lives a lot easier, which for the administrative side, if it's easier for your constituents, for the faculty and preceptors, making that easier for the admins too, easier for them to get buy in. Yes. And that was one of the things was the preceptor credential form that we decided to set up an e ELMS core, and it basically sends it to the preceptor. They click a link, letting them know that it's essential that they fill it out, that it's a must. They prefill it out, and it saves it for the next time. They get a reminder close to when their license is going to expire, and they get another email. They click it. It has it prepopulated with their information, and they change any necessary items and hit submit. So it's a one and done deal without overburdening the preceptor or the faculty constantly having to chase down documents. Yeah. That that's great. And the reporting for all of that too because I know like, Sarah, you and I have talked about in the past, whenever there's, something outstanding, like a preceptor who forgot to do their evaluation in time or a student is coming up on the end of their term, and they have, like, one day's worth of hours that still need to be confirmed and being able to report on all that information and then send out the reminders for faculty or for preceptors, whoever need, need those extra reminders and being able to to really narrow down and pinpoint, hey. You forgot to sign off on this date. Or, hey. This evaluation for x y z student is still due. Can definitely make it easier to to organize all that and make sure nothing really slips through the cracks. Exactly. And I appreciate it as much because since I am the very back end user that sets everything up for everybody, it's very you just are upfront. The faculty are like, okay. Here are the dates I want my evaluations to go out. You set it up, and it's you don't have to worry about it. You just double check, make sure that it gets done. There's good reports, functionality that allows you to do so so you can see. And then if you have to give, like, the extra reminder to preceptors or faculty, you can without sending it to everybody. One of my favorite features is the thank you certificate for our preceptors for their CEUs, and it's automatic. You just, you know, go in there for the classes, how many hours that they at least minimum have, and you hit send, and it sends it out with a nice message instead of the old way of doing it with mail merging from your email, crossing fingers that nothing's going to bounce back at you in hopes that you also don't get in trouble with the preceptor that comes later and says, hey. I need my hours. Everything's done correctly and efficient efficiently in core itself. Awesome. And one little bit of context too that I wanna mention because you talked about you're the main back end user kind of setting up and managing everything that you're doing for both the post licensure graduate nursing side and the traditional and accelerated undergrad and pre licensure, which adds a whole other layer of complexity of how each side has to do things a little bit differently. Yes. It's and it's easier. Like, once you see it and you go through it, it clicks. Like, oh, okay. That's a lot easier. And I'm able to schedule the the program I mean, professional grad or graduate side of things with it's basically maybe an hour now. When I first started, it took me a little bit because I wanted to make sure I hit all the steps. But now it's like boom, boom, boom. And then you double check the evals are tied to those classes, the correct one depending on the specialty. And then now with the undergrad, and it's lovely, awesome how it it's broken down with a parent's schedule, then it has their subchildren's schedule that shows, like, basically, the Sudoku or or the old Excel sheet of how they schedule the or undergrad, I'm sorry, and accelerated with their clinical rotations. And all of that is done in core with the sub child in their schedule. And the student can see it all in a calendar system, be well organized. And I I actually like that feature because I'm very detailed. I'm just like, okay. Yes. I know I this is my class, but alright. In two weeks, I have to get ready to go to this clinic, and it's I love it. I I if I was a student, I wish I could be. I would be, like, raving about it. But as the back end user, it is it's so much easier to maintain it, than what I have seen before. Awesome. So if anything that share that I'm sorry. Sarah shared today feels familiar, whether you're, navigating spreadsheets, managing growing cohorts, like your enrollment's going up, which is a challenge. It's a good challenge to have, but it is a challenge, or you're trying to get faculty more engaged, we would love to connect. So you should see a quick pop up, on the screen that pops up. It should have popped up just now. If you're cure if you're curious how core ELMS could support your team, just let us know. We would love to start the conversation wherever you are in the process. If you wanna hear a little bit more, more examples, or if you have a specific use case or something or kind of a unique situation that you want to pick your pick our brains on. So everything that Sarah described maps directly to core ELMS features designed specifically for nursing programs. And that includes the SmartMatch process for creating placements, gathering availability from sites, evaluation management, clinical applications for graduate programs where the student has to go out and find their own placement, student hours and compliance tracking, integrated messaging, mobile access, and reports that support your accreditation needs. Because I know that's ultimately, that's the end all, be all is having that data for your accreditation. So whether you're just getting started or you're looking to help faculty get more out of core, there are flexible ways to grow into the platform. And on the screen here, we've got a lot of different modules. And, like, Sarah could even tell you from experience, jumping into everything at once is a lot, and we can start small with these are the top priorities. And then as we continue on over the years, we're gonna add this component to it, or we're gonna talk about this piece that we wanna add to slowly build out and purposefully build out as many processes under one roof as possible. I can't. I just wanna add the The dedicated client support has been amazing, especially in working the one on one. And, of course, when they're not available because they have other items to go to, there's a lovely now from when I started a question mark that if you need to talk to somebody now, if there's not something relatable to help you with, they get right back to you. It's not a whole twenty four hours you have to wait with other systems. They get right back to you maybe in twenty minutes to an hour just depending on, you know, their workload. So I I really like that instead of waiting twenty four hours to get back to me like some some other, systems that are out there. Yeah. Yeah. To touch on our support structure a little bit, all of our clients have a dedicated client success manager. For example, I am Sarah's client success manager who works with the programs on, adoption and priorities. Say, we have a new a new simulation effectiveness tool that we wanna roll out. Here's how we would configure it. Here's what we're looking for. This is our goal with what we want to get out of the system. We talked very briefly about reporting for accreditation needs so we could think of the the end goal in mind and then work backwards of, okay. Here's how we'll set it up. And then for quick questions, things that come up, hey. I'm kinda I'm not sure this doesn't look correct, or I'm running into a weird error. We have our support team that can handle questions very quickly through our our support channel that is in the actual platform. So if you're on a page and you think, hey. This doesn't look quite right, there's a button you can click right from there that'll send it directly to our support team. So with a few minutes left, we love to open it up for questions. So feel free to drop them in the chat or the QA, whether they're about, UNMC and Sarah's experiences or core ELMS, more broadly. Jumped ahead too far. Alright. Well, hearing no questions. Thank you all again for joining us today. We really appreciate your time, especially as the spring term is just getting kicked off. So we hope this session has given you some practical ideas for supporting faculty adoption and simplifying your clinical workflows. If you'd like to continue the conversation, we're really happy to connect. We would love to talk more about it. And huge, huge massive thank you to Sarah for sharing her time and expertise. Thank you.