BACKGROUND

Founded in 1927, Regis College is a small college with a 132-acre campus located in the town of Weston, 12 miles west of Boston. Regis College’s School of Nursing offers programs for those wishing to start a career in nursing as well as current nurses seeking to advance their careers. All nursing programs in the School provide cutting edge education and strive to meet the needs of an ever-changing field. Courses are also offered off-site at Boston area hospitals including Norwood Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Faulkner, and Boston Medical Center. In addition, an entire BS completion program for RNs is offered at Regis’s satellite campus in Lawrence, Massachusetts at Northern Essex Community College.

CHALLENGE

With more than 400 pre-licensure junior and senior nursing students, in 2013 the Regis School of Nursing was struggling to keep track of all of their students’ numerous required lab and clinical activities. “We were still using paper sign­off sheets,” explained Patricia M. McCauley, DNP, CHSE, RN, former Director of the Clinical Resource and Simulation Center in the School of Nursing and Health Professions. “We tried, unsuccessfully, to manage records in a couple of different ways. We tried having the instructors hold the records, and then we tried having the students be responsible for holding on to their records. It was a very cumbersome and inefficient process. Instructors would forget to sign off. Students would lose their sign­off sheets. It was a mess.” They had an immediate need to find a solution with which they could track the skills students had learned. The Radiography department at the College was using the Trajecsys Report System, which is how McCauley first heard about Trajecsys, its functionality, and the positive results it was providing for that department.

SOLUTION

For Regis’ Nursing Program, it was initially used for recordkeeping of nursing skills, which are completed in the Clinical Resource and Simulation Center, allowing administrators to know when a student has achieved proficiency in a skill or activity. The Trajecsys Report System supports each set of items documenting a student's progress toward professional entry-level abilities, in addition to supporting multiple item sets, which can remain paired to the same skill or procedure. For example, if a program has a lab competency, a general competency, and a final competency for a single skill, the system can provide separate assessments and reports and relate them all to the same skill.

RESULTS

After implementing the Trajecsys Report System, the program was able to completely streamline their previously cumbersome recordkeeping processes – providing numerous time­saving advantages and procedural efficiencies – all backed by the Trajecsys team. According to McCauley: “The Trajecsys support has been great. During implementation, they were right there for us; they conducted multiple meetings at the outset in order to understand our specific needs.”

MORE EFFECTIVE STUDENTS’ SKILLS PROFICIENCY MONITORING

Clinical instructors could now see the skills that students had completed in real-time, which enabled them to identify where students’ skills are lacking and where they might be having trouble.

ACCURATE TIME AND LOCATION TRACKING

Regis also wanted to electronically keep track of how many students are in the lab on a weekly basis and to track how often students are coming for extra help. McCauley added, “We needed to have documentation around what we’re doing – specifically for our resource center that is open 24 hours. It was necessary from an admin standpoint, but also key for a number of our grant applications. Students can now clock in and clock out and all of it’s tracked through Trajecsys.”

DECREASED ADMINISTRATIVE PAPERWORK

The Trajecsys solution also cut down on the workload and administrative tracking of paperwork

ADDED STUDENT EMPLOYMENT BENEFIT WITH SKILLS PORTFOLIOS

When students apply for jobs, they have complete electronic documentation of the skills they’ve completed. “It benefits the students in the end,” added McCauley, “since they’re able to provide visually pleasing skills portfolios, which stand out among stacks of resumes.”