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.”