Healthcare professionals get to make a difference every day. It’s an amazing field to work in - especially when you consider the variety of career paths available. Here at VerityStream, we’re excited about the evolving range of careers in the area of Medical Staff Services (MSS). Late last year, we sat down with a panel of professionals to explore emerging roles and what they entail. The role of Proctor Coordinator is one area that inspired a lot of discussion.
The term proctoring is sometimes confused with precepting, but these functions are quite different, so we’ll start by clarifying how proctoring works. Many organizations use proctoring as a tool to confirm competence during the initial Focused Professional Practice Evaluation (FPPE). This means it is the organization’s responsibility to confirm competence during a provider’s introduction into the organization. This can be done by watching a provider perform a procedure, or retrospectively carrying out an evaluation by reviewing the patient record. The work is vital for ensuring an organization only approves physicians that meet necessary criteria, safeguarding its patients.
Clearly, Proctor Coordinators play a big role in ensuring patient safety, and maintaining their organization’s reputation. The main way a Proctor Coordinator can keep their organization on the right track is to help standardize medical staff processes by embracing technology and bridging the gap between all departments through the use of one centralized system.
As you can imagine, a lot of work goes into proctoring, which means streamlining the process is of the utmost importance. It’s vital to eliminate redundancies wherever possible, which is why working with a comprehensive platform, like CredentialStream is ideal. In essence, the proctoring process needs to be less about paperwork and more about the content therein. It’s also important to have set parameters clarifying the proctoring role of every department, including Medical Staff Services (MSS), the Quality and Patient Safety Department, and Peer Review to ensure there is no overlap. Having a centralized source for proctors and practitioners to communicate and receive status updates through goes a long way in eliminating inefficiencies.
By automating the proctoring process, we can enhance compliance and track which forms and procedures are complete, which improves overall turn-around times for any given evaluation. And with all departments having visibility into the process, organizations can ensure everybody is on the same page, eliminating the chance of nasty surprises down the line.
Ultimately, the goal is to build a robust, professionally rewarding program not only for the proctors and the proctored, but also for the patients who will benefit from receiving the safest and most quality care possible.
With the exponential growth of careers in MSS, there are bound to be opportunities in different organizations as proctors. Are you considering a move into proctorship? If so, here’s a bit of advice we received from our panel of industry experts during our webinar, Evolving Careers: Learning from those who have focused in a specialty of Medical Staff Services (MSS).
To be a great proctor, the panel indicated you must be: