Samuel L. Jackson once lamented that Jurassic Park has all the problems of a major theme park and a major zoo. Clinical Coordinators can relate. They have the challenges that come with a University and a hospital. But unless you work with a clinical coordinator, you might not realize how much they truly do.
In the most basic sense, a Clinical Coordinator helps students get their required clinical rotation.
Simple, right?
Not really. To accomplish this, Clinical Coordinators work with students, faculty, and administration at clinical locations, such as hospitals, clinics, doctor’s offices, and more. The process starts when the student registers for a class that requires a clinical rotation. This sets off a series of dominoes that have the Clinical Coordinator juggling students, faculty, and facilities, each with their own unique challenges.
Before a student can even step foot into a hospital for a clinical rotation, the Clinical Coordinator needs to collect and verify a plethora of documents. Depending on their process, this could be as easy as verifying through their credentialing platform that the documents have been uploaded by the students or as difficult as hunting down students with emails and phone calls to try to get them to drop off their paperwork.
Next, they need to verify the student’s credentials. Some schools require background checks, which need to be secured. The clinical coordinator then needs to provide either a verbal confirmation or an attestation form to the facility stating that the students are cleared to start. This process multiples with every different facility their students are going to. Depending on the school’s workflow, this can be a manual process utilizing spreadsheets and paper documentation for the Clinical Coordinator.
A Clinical Coordinator’s job is never done. Just because a student’s credentials are proper when they start the class doesn’t mean they won’t expire mid-semester. Clinical Coordinators need to monitor the credentials of all of their students to ensure that they stay in compliance. If the school has a system, this monitoring can be automated, but if not, the Clinical Coordinator must stay on top of all credentials for all students.
Whether a school needs to comply with FERPA to keep federal funding or they simply want to ensure the privacy of their students, there are substantial security risks with keeping students’ documents. This is compounded when health records for clinical compliance are added.
If a school isn’t using a secure system, then it falls on the clinical coordinator to make sure that they are storing the records correctly, using the correct encryption, securing their computers when left alone, and making sure that private documents are not just left on their desk by busy students. And all paper documents need to be stored in secure locations.
As stated above, Clinical Coordinators work with students, faculty, and clinical locations. Depending on the size of the school, they need to communicate with hundreds of students and dozens, sometimes hundreds of hospitals, on top of their roster of teachers and mentors. This can take the form of phone calls, emails, text messages, physical letters, and in some cases, notes left in mailboxes.
Let’s loop back around to Jurassic Park. A buggy computer system with a disgruntled coder led to the downfall of the park. But if they had a secure process in place and a trusted system, the movie would be more about how great dinosaurs are and not a cautionary tale exposing the dangers of untested software.
Having a plan and secure software will go a long way to make sure that your Clinical Coordinator doesn’t have to worry about T-Rex’s… or extra administrative burden.
What we outlined here are just a few of the many challenges facing clinical coordinators. We want to hear from you. Reach out to Davin Workforce Solutions to discuss your challenges and how our solutions can be your solutions.