Optimisation of internship planning
Maastricht University Medical Center optimises internship planning with Low-Code app
Simplify internship planning
Every year, more than 1,500 students do internships at Maastricht University Medical Center (MUMC+). These students come from different educational institutions and need an internship at their own level in a department that suits their training. Planning for so many students is a complex and time-consuming process. To simplify this process, Ciphix, together with the MUMC+, has developed an application that digitizes and automates the planning of internships: Internship Planner.
- Limited support automation
Many incoming emails and complex and error-prone plan work in various Excel files. - Reduced administrative pressure
Reduced number of emails & improved planning process. - Excellent Security
Security an important focal point because personal data is handled.
Complex planning
Previously, planning internships was done with a large Excel file. On top of that, a considerable amount of incoming emails also had to be handled. These emails came from students who wanted to notify a change in their schedule or inform the hospital of their preferences for certain departments. Because there were more and more factors to consider and the number of students was growing rapidly, the scheduling became too complex to handle manually.
The MUMC+ wanted to address this and went looking for an application that could help them with this challenge. Ciphix was chosen to support the MUMC+ in developing a solution that would simplify the scheduling process and reduce the number of emails.
The solution had to provide students with quality internships based on their personal preferences. In addition, the application had to support the hospital’s departments in their formation planning. In fact, scheduling students was quite complicated for these departments because most students also have to attend classes, so they are not available on a daily basis. In addition, the application had to be easy to work with and as many tasks as possible had to be performed automatically instead of manually.
Smart desktop solution based on low-code
In one year, MUMC+ and Ciphix jointly developed “Stage Planner,” a new desktop solution for planning internships. Stage Planner is built based on the Mendix platform making it easy to add functionality quickly and flexibly. In a complex environment that is constantly changing like the hospital, this is crucial. Later, Ciphix optimized the front-end and performed security checks because the application works with personal data. The application started as a pilot for a few departments and is now operational throughout MUMC+.
Internship Planner includes a flexible scheduling mechanism that automatically generates the best schedule based on student preferences for different nursing departments. The planner performs this complex and time-consuming task efficiently. Mark van IJsselstein, coordinator of the internship program at MUMC+: “Internship Planner has made my life so much easier. Many of my tasks are now automated and tasks that cannot be done manually can now be done in bulk. As a result, I have to spend much less time scheduling internships. It takes me less than half the time I used to spend on it.”
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Competitive Advantage
Besides the time savings in scheduling, there are other benefits. In a competitive market where newly trained medical personnel are in high demand, MUMC+ can now offer students internships that exactly match their needs. As a result, fewer students drop out during their training. Since many students are potential employees, this assures the MUMC+ of more staff in the future.
Internship Planner also provides comprehensive management information that allows MUMC+ to better predict how many students will graduate in the coming years. This gives the hospital a better picture of available staff in the future. The application also provides more information about the dropout rate per department. If certain departments have a high dropout rate, MUMC+ management can decide to investigate the situation and take appropriate measures if necessary.
Internship precisely tailored to students’ needs
Students also benefit from using Internship Planner. A few weeks before the start of their internship, they now automatically receive an e-mail notification asking them to indicate their preferences for a specific hospital department. Says Mark van IJsselstein, “For a student who wants to work in the ambulance in the future, an internship in the hospital lab may not be so great, but an internship in the Emergency Department can have a lot of added value. With Internship Planner, we can now organize an internship in a department that exactly matches their needs, resulting in less student dropout. We are already seeing that our personalized internship program is attracting more students. Since there is a huge shortage of well-trained medical personnel, this is a huge competitive advantage for us.”
Greater insight into the availability of medical staff
For the various departments of the hospital, working with Stage Planner means that they are automatically notified via the application which student is coming to do an internship. They then automatically receive the student’s daily schedule, making it easier for them to plan for their shifts.
Internship Planner also automatically makes other information about the student available, such as their learning objectives. By checking boxes, department planners can indicate that they have read the additional information. As a result, departments spend less time on administration and avoid an overload of emails. Internship Planner also ensures better distribution of the right students across the hospital’s various departments.
Collaboration with other educational institutions
Stage Planner was built for students studying nursing, but in the future, the application can easily be extended to other educational institutions in the region (OOR). Herbert Lebens, information manager at MUMC+ and product owner: “I see a lot of possibilities for Stage Planner. In principle, the internships of other types of hospital students are similar. For example, Stage Planner has already been expanded to include internships for medical students and the regional training programs for co-assistants. When all internships will soon be planned through Stage Planner, the hospital will have a complete overview of available interns per department. That is something we have lacked in the past.”
Lebens adds: “Now that we have seen what we can achieve, we would like to further scale up the use of Stage Planner. The Zuyderland Medical Center has already decided to start using Stage Planner as well. In the future, all medical centers in the region could collaborate through Stage Planner. Then we will be able to offer even more students a customized internship and hospitals in the region will have more control over their available staff.”
Related:
- Automatically generated internship schedule
Best schedule is generated based on student preference. - Less dropout
Because internships now match students’ needs precisely. - Better management information
This gives the hospital a better picture of available staff in the future.
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