Electronic Health Reporter

By Aaron White, InPlace Software

With healthcare workforce shortages growing more critical, policymakers are considering avenues to significantly expand clinical education programs, and academic institutions with health education programs must prepare for more medical, nursing, and allied health students to meet growing hiring demands — some proposals before Congress call for doubling and tripling health training programs.

The imperative for higher education institutions to integrate on-the-job learning extends beyond healthcare studies. Students and parents are demanding a more defined trajectory from education to employment regardless of the learners’ chosen major.

Exemplified by the healthcare education model of clinical rotations, experiential work-integrated learning — defined workplace experiences included in coursework — is becoming increasingly vital for academic institutions to incorporate into their programs.

But — as any health education administrator can attest — managing students’ workplace learning can be cumbersome, particularly when using traditional, manual processes. Software that automates the many moving parts of students’ workplace assignments can be crucial to an institution’s success for several reasons, while simultaneously better meeting the workforce demands of employers. Here’s how.

Smart technology that manages workplace learning assignments like clinical rotations gives institutions many advantages; for example, InPlace Software handles every step of managing students’ clinical learning, from workplace matching and assigning students, to tracking and grading their performance, and collecting feedback from clinical supervisors. That’s a significant time saver.

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