Falck Rocky Mountain Ambulance
An EMT approached Shaunna King, the clinical director of Falck Rocky Mountain Ambulance. Before her fellow employee even opened his mouth, King knew what he would ask: “What CEs do I have with you? I need to recertify and need to know what I’m missing.”
It was a moment of déjà vu, one King often re-lived as a director tasked with overseeing 160 employees’ clinical excellence.
Something Needed to Change
“Every one of our employees would wait until the last minute to come to my office and say, . . . ‘Am I ready to recert?’” King recalls. “It became very frustrating and challenging.” The constant questions, paperwork, and administrative duties made it difficult for King to spare time to focus on Falck’s ultimate goal—providing her team with the resources they need to provide the best service available.
The challenges weren’t any easier for King’s fellow employees. “Continuing education has been one of the worst problems because you have to do that outside of your normal work times and have to find the classes and do all that on your own,” George Demay, Falck’s Field Training Officer says.
David Patterson, Falck’s regional CEO, adds, “With an industry that is 24 hours a day 7 days a week, it’s really difficult to get everybody in one place at one time—it’s really impossible. So to get that consistent content, that consistent message and curriculum, out to a number of EMTs and paramedics and support staff is really a challenge.”
Demay, King, and Patterson knew that for their team to be able to reach their goals, something had to change.
Searching for a Solution
Luckily, a solution wasn’t far away. As King began to research solutions, Patterson suggested she look into one specific company—CareerCert.
“I’ve used CareerCert or its predecessor company for 20 years personally for my paramedic certification,” Patterson says. While Patterson loves the flexibility of CareerCert’s online learning options, what really set CareerCert apart was that they “are a content provider that has all the hours you need, the lectures aren’t the same, [and] you get really interesting content, because variety is obviously something that we want to provide to our providers so that they remain engaged,” Patterson says. He knew that for Falck Rocky Mountain to best protect and care for their community, they needed the best continuing education and training options.
As King compared CareerCert to other CE providers, her choice soon became obvious. “If you’re shopping for a learning management system, I think CareerCert is the easiest to use for both the end-user and the administrator,” she says. “It allows you to track in real-time what your employees are doing. It allows you to run real-time data on your organization at the clinical level—what do you need to focus on as an organization; what topics do you need to look at? And everything is in one spot that’s super easy to use.”
Exceeding Expectations
From day one, King knew she had made the right decision. “Our experience with CareerCert has definitely exceeded our expectations,” she says. “They were available to us basically 24 hours a day to get this up and running for our company.”
Patterson adds, “CareerCert has grown into quite an organization, but there really is still a boutique, individualized customer approach. I can call and talk to the folks at the top of the organization if I need something any time.”
One of CareerCert’s customer success managers personally helped the team upload their personnel records, making it easy for King to create training and pull reports customized based on provider type, certifications, licensures, expirations, and more with the click of a button.
The transparency that CareerCert provides for Falck has been transformative, helping them avoid certification lapses and provide immediate remediation, when needed. And it’s never been easier for the team to stay up to date on crucial company training.
Using CareerCert, Falck has been able to create training specific to their team. “For example, if we just introduced a new triage system,” Pattersons says, “you can deliver that content virtually through a customized class. . . . Any employee can log in whenever they want to take that training. That flexibility is really key to providing the content that we need to [our employees].”
King adds, “It prevents us from having to bring the entire workforce in to the same location and spend that in payroll when we can do that in small chunks over a period of time.”
Saving Time, Stress, and Lives
CareerCert isn’t only simplifying training for the administrative team, it’s also easier than ever for their providers to refresh skills and stay prepared.
“Our employees can sign in from anywhere—from their mobile phone, from the ambulance, from the comfort of their own living room—to do CE when it is convenient for them,” King says.
Demay notes how easy it is for his team to stop their courses if a call comes in and come back right where they left off. “With CareerCert you can do what it is you need to do when you need to do it on your own time and schedule,” he says. “CareerCert is very user-friendly. . . . It has saved me a lot of time. There’s no travel time to and from classes; there’s no having to block out days off for work.”
And the best part is CareerCert has allowed Falck to better focus on what is most important to them—improving patient outcomes and protecting their community. With CareerCert’s engaging, industry-leading content, Falck’s providers have been able to sharpen their skills so they are prepared for any call.
“If CareerCert didn’t exist for Falck Rocky Mountain, I think that we’d still be kind of in the Stone Age,” King says. “I highly recommend CareerCert. I think it’s the best alternative to allow all of your employees to have all of their continuing education tracked in one place, to be able to look at that data in real-time, to be able to evaluate the weakness within your organization at the clinical level . . . so I think it gives you that one learning management system where you can do everything for your company.”
