The first time you look at the CoAEMSP Student Minimum Competency (SMC) Matrix (formerly known as “Appendix G”), you wonder how you will ever get your students through all of the requirements. The mere volume of required skills is overwhelming. Then, you add to that trying to keep track of which ones require “at least one” check off by an instructor or which ones need to be done prior to any clinical or field rotation versus which ones only have to be finished prior to capstone—it all leaves your head spinning.
There are two main tools which will lay the foundation for success: planning and communication.
Planning
The first step in planning is to realistically determine which items will be accomplished during which course. That is, you lay out the plan to “eat the elephant—one bite at a time.”
In general, it is best to associate skills with the relevant content course—this way you are constantly integrating cognitive content with acquisition of psychomotor skills. I’m a huge advocate of “cognimotor” integration: students so-often partition skills off in their minds as a completely separate entity to be mastered. This produces a disjointed thought process and a lagging ability to properly apply the learned skill to patient care.
Instead, we must consistently use content to stimulate the appropriate response (i.e., an intervention “skill.”)
While the columns of Table 2 were originally intended to be completed sequentially, the CoAEMSP seems to have relaxed their stance on that given the limited amount of time our students are with us. It is still best to adhere, as much as possible, to a sequential step-wise progression from lab to scenario to live isolated to simulation/clinical/field setting; however, slight adjustments to accommodate your program are acceptable as long as they are approved by your Advisory Committee and Medical Director.
How many of a given skill can we reasonably expect to accomplish during a given time block? This depends on whether you are dealing with any rate-limiting-steps (“bottlenecks”) in your system. Do you have enough staff to cycle all students through at least once? How about twice? Will your budget support those man-hours? Do you have enough equipment to have multiple stations? Can your students work independently on “old” skills while their classmates spend time with faculty learning today’s “new” skill? I’ll discuss some creative ways to maximize your time in a future article.
Sterling Credentials helps with your planning—besides setting up your program minimums via the SMC, you can chop up the requirements into each course within the cohort and keep track that the sums still reach your required minimums. When you set up subsequent cohorts, you can edit/modify your plan without having to re-create it every time.
Communication
No matter how precise a plan is, it is useless if it is not adequately communicated across the team. This includes both support faculty and students. If people do not understand what is expected, they cannot possibly accomplish the objectives.
Simply telling your students that they must complete X number of this skill “some time over the next 8 weeks” will also result in failure. The remedy? Clearly communicate what is expected for any block of time dedicated to skills.
When you set up a skill session in the Sterling platform, each skill shows the minimums you have set for that session or day. This way, all involved parties understand exactly what their goals are so everybody is pulling in the same direction! The efficiency introduced by this one simple communication tool powers your team to success.
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Adjunct and student users can clearly see what is expected during a given block of time. Additionally, students can immediately see what they should be doing while waiting their turn with faculty.