Help with Tracking In-services

Monica RN,BSN · Oct 31, 2004

Most recently I left a position as the director of staff education for LTC.

Loved the job, just had a once in a life time opportunity to move on to bigger and better things...

These are the things I found to be vry helpful..

Make a 3x5 index card file box to track credentialing. In my state, Florida, licenses are renewed in either April or July, depending on what batch the nurse falls in.. Having the cards in order either by name or by month of expiration, which is how I recoomend it, you can go to that month and pull your cards.. as they produce a new license renewal mark the card with the new date and put back in the box.

For inservices, I did so many and had to com eup with a way to track this as well. Get several 2" 3 ring notebooks, divider sheets, and mark on the dividers one for each month of the year.

I had a book for Jan- March

April-June

July - Sept

OCt. - Dec

All inservices done would have a sign in page and a cover page detailing the content of the inservice, also attaching the outline or course handouts used for that particular inservice. They would then be stored in order under the correct month of presentation.

To track by employee, I actually had a page for every employee to write this on. It is very time consuming, (200 employees) but necessary.. often times I would have a light duty CNA or a volunteer help with the logging of inservices.

Each name from a sign in sheet is then recorded on the individual employee log sheet, so that at a glance you can look at their inservice sheet and know how many inservices they have attended.

a simpler, but less detailed manner would be to count the number of signatures on the inservice sign in sheet, take a blank certificate of inservice attendence, write all the details on this certifcate, except the participants name, make as many copies as you need from the sign in sheet, then go back and put each persons name on one for each. These can now be filed in their education files, which you should have an individual file for education on all anyways, now if you want to know you can go to each file and look to see how many certificates they have to validate how many inservices they have attended.

This is effective, but not as good as being able to go to a notebook to loo up a particular person, as here you have to go to many files to track this information. The log book is a better way to go, just takes a bit longer to do it that way.

Good Luck to you.

InService · Nov 1, 2004

Thanks Monica, that was very good information. Seems very time consuming though. But your advise is wonderful. Thanks again.

In-Service

Most recently I left a position as the director of staff education for LTC.
Loved the job, just had a once in a life time opportunity to move on to bigger and better things...
These are the things I found to be vry helpful..
Make a 3x5 index card file box to track credentialing. In my state, Florida, licenses are renewed in either April or July, depending on what batch the nurse falls in.. Having the cards in order either by name or by month of expiration, which is how I recoomend it, you can go to that month and pull your cards.. as they produce a new license renewal mark the card with the new date and put back in the box.
For inservices, I did so many and had to com eup with a way to track this as well. Get several 2" 3 ring notebooks, divider sheets, and mark on the dividers one for each month of the year.
I had a book for Jan- March
April-June
July - Sept
OCt. - Dec
All inservices done would have a sign in page and a cover page detailing the content of the inservice, also attaching the outline or course handouts used for that particular inservice. They would then be stored in order under the correct month of presentation.
To track by employee, I actually had a page for every employee to write this on. It is very time consuming, (200 employees) but necessary.. often times I would have a light duty CNA or a volunteer help with the logging of inservices.
Each name from a sign in sheet is then recorded on the individual employee log sheet, so that at a glance you can look at their inservice sheet and know how many inservices they have attended.
a simpler, but less detailed manner would be to count the number of signatures on the inservice sign in sheet, take a blank certificate of inservice attendence, write all the details on this certifcate, except the participants name, make as many copies as you need from the sign in sheet, then go back and put each persons name on one for each. These can now be filed in their education files, which you should have an individual file for education on all anyways, now if you want to know you can go to each file and look to see how many certificates they have to validate how many inservices they have attended.
This is effective, but not as good as being able to go to a notebook to loo up a particular person, as here you have to go to many files to track this information. The log book is a better way to go, just takes a bit longer to do it that way.
Good Luck to you.

jackie29 · Nov 17, 2004

i have a ticker file to track license renewals. i list all nurses, their license # and exp. date and at the beginning of the month i just go down the list. i have a form that i use to track inservices that i can email you if you'd like.

I'm just curious? How do you track your in-services? Can you give me some ideas on how you track them efficiently? And also, how to you keep track of credentializing--you know, when a nurses license needs to be renewed? Any help would be highly appreciated.

InService · Nov 17, 2004

i have a ticker file to track license renewals. i list all nurses, their license # and exp. date and at the beginning of the month i just go down the list. i have a form that i use to track inservices that i can email you if you'd like.

Jackie, thanks so much for your answer. However, I found an in-service software tracking system that also tracks license certification. It's a really great product. It does just about EVERYTHING. It has saved me soooooooooo much time. It's a really great product. :balloons: It's called eStaffTrak. I highly recommend it.

vivitron · Dec 1, 2004

I'm just curious? How do you track your in-services? Can you give me some ideas on how you track them efficiently? And also, how to you keep track of credentializing--you know, when a nurses license needs to be renewed? Any help would be highly appreciated.

We got together with our computer department and they wrote a program that HR enters licensing info, including CNA's cert. we also added to that TB, CPR, and the annual mandatories. The information automatically is printed on their paycheck as a reminder. As the employee completes any of the required areas (TB, CPR ETC.) we enter the date that it was completed. The computer program automatically calculates the next time they are due to renew and prints it on the paycheck about a month before they are due as a reminder. It took some time to work out the bugs and the things we wanted.

Also the computer department keeps track of all inservices. we give each inservice a number. The title and date are entered with the number . The sign in sheets are sent to them and they enter the information for each employee. We can look up for each employee which inservices they have attended. We can look up what inservices we've had too.

elmo22 · Jan 5, 2005

Jackie, thanks so much for your answer. However, I found an in-service software tracking system that also tracks license certification. It's a really great product. It does just about EVERYTHING. It has saved me soooooooooo much time. It's a really great product. :balloons: It's called eStaffTrak. I highly recommend it.

:coollook: Hi How do I get the software?

InService · Jan 5, 2005

Hi How do I get the software?

I read about the product in a magazine and sent an email. The email address is [email protected]. They set up a web demonstration and we loved the product and purchased it. The cost is $750 but it was definitely worth it.

purplemania, BSN, RN · Jan 5, 2005

we use a combo of things already on our computer: Education enters names of people attending classes into a database. Each person's "transcript" is available to the manager thru public folders on Microsoft Outlook. Most managers have Microsoft Excel grids set up with employees names in the first column and other columns labeled with whatever they are tracking (license renewal, ACLS, TB test, required inservice, etc.). The grid is updated by referring to the transcript or by having the employee provide documentation. BTW, Employee Health enters the annual TB test on the transcript too. Some managers have an e-folder with each employee's name in a file. The file has the last evaluation, transcript and whatever else you want to keep on that person. Eliminates a lot of paper and is easily accessible. FINALLY, if you want a tickler file, Microsoft Outlook has that capability on the "task" menu. It takes a while to put in each person's data, but after that it is a breeze and will alert you daily to what is due. I set up due dates a 2-4 weeks ahead so I can remind employee to get me the documentation. Hope this helps. We like this plan because the Office software is cheap and easy to use.

InService · Jan 5, 2005

Thanks for that info. But the product we bought does all of that and more. It's really amazing. AND, the company that we bought the product from, installed all of our data into the system so we didn't have to spend time typing in all the employees, etc. When we received the product, it was all ready to start. It has alerts that lets me know when a person is up for license renewals. AND, they even customized it for a few things that my facility uses that most others do not. It prints out reports, keeps track of hours, everything. It has cut my time on in-services in half. A couple of you have asked for info of this product. I can give you the email address for the product its [email protected]

Q. · Jan 17, 2005

We will be using a Learning Management System in the very near future (Pathlore) that also does all this for us, as well as allows staff to register for classes, generates email notices, and track attendance. We've already purchased the product and now we are in the process of implementation.

Here's a site with more information:

http://www.osc.edu/education/webed/Tools/archive/2002_01.htm

Topcat13 · Mar 4, 2005

There are several computer based programs available for education tracking. My vision of a one stop education electronic resource management system was realized through the IS department at the hospital I worked at. If you have a savvy IS group, then they could write code around an Access database that allows electronic registration, record keeping and reports. The IS team I worked with created a badge scan integration so that classroom activity attendance could be entered into the electronic database by simply swiping your badge into a card reader and downloading that information into the system by pressing a button...and presto, all attendance was recorded on their individual transcripts. I was able to run department reports and course reports.

I am now with a hospital system that has a learning management system (LMS) that is a dream for providing on-line education and record keeping...it requires commitment and money to launch it, it requires leadership and dedicated resources to support it, and requires a culture that embraces an electronic environment. Our journey and success is a book worth writing.

If money, commitment, etc. are unavailable for a LMS, then if you are comfortable using Microsoft Excel I suggest it as an alternative to the manual methods that most of us grew up with and still use. Moving things to electronic formats always takes time to set it up. But once you have your templates developed then you'll save loads of time and be more effective and efficient when data was needed or requested. Plus, you'll be able to get rid of some file cabinets in your office.

One word to the wise...from experience...if you use computers to maintain data, be sure to save your data frequently to an external source (external hard drive, network server, CDs) rather than just to your computer hard drive.