Simple Clinical Assessments

Working in healthcare education presents a unique set of challenges and rewards due to the many moving pieces that make up the curriculum. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’ve likely already juggled multiple tasks this week...if not today. Regardless of your specific role, the end goals remain the same for each program: ace that next site visit, have the highest possible first-time board passage rates, and put students in the best position to grow into highly capable and successful healthcare professionals.

So, let’s focus on that last point - helping students grow into capable and successful healthcare professionals. As healthcare programs prepare students for their careers in medicine, specialized clinical experiences afford students the chance to be trained on the job - good old-fashioned learning by doing. But of course, we all know that learning by doing alone isn’t enough. Performance in these practical encounters needs to be evaluated with quality feedback given to students. It’s this feedback that truly provides students the opportunity to reflect and improve their skills moving forward.

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Feedback That Matters

While immediate verbal feedback is valuable, it can’t always be recalled at a later time, nor can it be tracked as a formal evaluation within your program. Unfortunately, collecting formal evaluations from off-site clinical evaluators that haven’t been trained on a new evaluation platform can be a difficult task as well. I can also tell you from years of working in healthcare education that it’s very easy for their password to be forgotten or lost when users aren’t frequently logging in. These hurdles can create the helpless feeling of having vital team members that can’t access a system that is required to complete student evaluations.

Oftentimes, the issues mentioned above can be addressed by simply having the right tool in hand. And if you come from a healthcare education program like I do, that tool is Leo. Leo is the curriculum management platform designed specifically for your needs, including the complex issues surrounding the clinical years of your curriculum.

You need to have multiple off-site evaluators complete student evaluations throughout the curriculum. Leo makes that easy through everyone’s most familiar tech tool - email. It’s really as simple as it sounds: clinical preceptors receive evaluation reminders via email and can click straight through from the email to complete their evaluations.

These authenticated links open directly into the evaluation - no need for your preceptors to login or remember a password. This works just as well on their phone as it does on their laptop or desktop, helping ensure compliance.

Most importantly, this means students get essential feedback faster. With Leo, all completed evaluations, including comments from faculty, are made available to students in their personal Academic Portrait. Students’ easy access to this timely feedback provides the real benefit of learning by doing in the clinical setting. Whether it is simple feedback that allows for an immediate change in their performance or more in-depth comments that starts a conversation with their clinical evaluator, students can now take action to improve their skills and provide better patient care.

Leo's user-friendly evaluation module creates a more robust learning environment while also reducing the time and technological burdens on your clinical faculty. Easily provide more timely feedback, improve student performance, and enhance patient care...all with the help of Leo, the platform created specifically for the needs of healthcare educators. Leo was a game-changer for me in my healthcare education career and I’m willing to bet it could have the same impact for you.