Arizona School of Dentistry and Oral Health

About

A.T. Still University’s Arizona School of Dentistry and Oral Health (ASDOH), located in Mesa, Arizona, was the first dental school in the state. ASDOH’s mission is to “educate compassionate community-minded oral health-providers to lead the profession.” With modern facilities and passionate faculty, ASDOH is transforming dental education to improve the health of all communities through service while integrating whole person care and scientific inquiry practices. The program has more than 300 enrolled students and 24 weeks of outside clinical experience.

The Challenge

In 2018, ASDOH got in touch with AllofE Solutions as they were searching for a program that could systematically schedule external clinical rotations, keep track of clinical documentation, and measure student performance. eMedley was implemented with multiple modules from the platform.

The Solution: Implementing eMedley

ASDOH customized the eKeeper, eduSched, eCLAS, and eValuate applications modules in eMedley to fit its specific needs.

eKeeper was implemented in order for the program to keep track of data related to students, faculty members, clinical sites, and preceptors. In eKeeper, ASDOH can report on specific external site information and logistics for students. ASDOH can track that required documentation, certifications, and immunizations have been completed by students prior to starting internal and external clinical work. The same documentation as well as license information can be tracked for preceptors and faculty. All documentation is centralized and tracked within the system making it easy and convenient for all users at ASDOH.

eduSched transformed the scheduling and tracking of external experiential rotations by allowing students to select and rank clinical sites. A lottery algorithm then automatically schedules them into the sites based on the preferences and site capacity limits. Capacities update as students are scheduled to a specific site, preventing overscheduling and denoting what sites are still available. These real-time capacity updates also allow for ASDOH to pre-schedule students with special circumstances as necessary.
A few of the custom scheduling rules that were added to the automated scheduling algorithm included:

1. Each student will go on 4 external rotations.
2. Each student MUST be assigned to two rotations outside of the Phoenix metro area.
3. Students cannot go to the same site twice
4. Only schedule sites that are listed on students’ preference lists.

The results of the scheduling algorithm are loaded into eduSched’s Schedule Planner where administrators can make adjustments, drop schedules, and assign preceptors. The customizations implemented with this process allow for a flexible schedule generation which satisfies both students and ASDOH’s scheduling team.

eCLAS was implemented to track students completion of the minimum number of hours per external rotation as well as the type of experience and procedures encountered.

eValuate helps to track student and program performance on various evaluations such as:

• Students evaluating their experience in the external rotation
• Students evaluating their specific external site
• Preceptors evaluating student performance in the external rotation in areas such as: Foundation Knowledge, Professionalism & Leadership Skills, Patient Management, Critical Thinking, Technical Clinical Skills, Self Assessment

Customizing the Solution

ASDOH worked closely with AllofE to implement custom scheduling rules and build two custom evaluation reports:

• SPE Report (Student Performance Evaluation): individual student report with response frequency analysis by question and associated preceptor comments aggregated across all external rotations.
• SEER Report (Student Evaluation of External Rotation and Site): response frequency analysis by question with the associated student comments aggregated by site.

For More Information

Ms. Marcia Arbizu, M.B.A.
Director, ICSP
Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health
marbizu@atsu.edu