St Luke's Hospice Sheffield

"The amount of people we've trained has gone up massively. In previous years, we were training maybe 3000 or 4000 people a year, but this financial year we've trained 5000 people and we're hoping to expand on that next year."

Nye Rawlings | Project ECHO Administration Coordinator at St Luke's Hospice Sheffield 

St Luke's Hospice Sheffield has been utilising accessplanit's training management software for a year and in this short time they have been able to scale up their operations and deliver training to more people. 

We spoke with Nye Rawlings, Project ECHO Administration Coordinator at St Luke's Hospice, to find out how he uses accessplanit and how it has impacted his day-to-day. 

About St Luke's Hospice Sheffield and Project ECHO

Project ECHO stands for Extension of Community Healthcare Outcomes. It is a worldwide project that supports learning and knowledge sharing between professionals in the health and social care sector. 

Project ECHO provides free online training courses, some of which are mandatory for NHS staff, such as Oliver McGowan training. 

St Luke's Hospice is one of three super hubs for Project ECHO, meaning they provide this training and can also train up other hubs. They deliver tailored training programmes in specialities such as end-of-life care, learning disabilities and bereavement.

St Luke's Hospice Sheffield runs in the range of 12-15 sessions a week and trained around 5,000 people this past financial year - numbers which went up since implementing accessplanit's training management software. Read on to find out how. 

The challenge

Nye has been working as the Project ECHO Administration Coordinator at St Luke's Hospice Sheffield since February 2023. He explained how they were in the Plan stage of their accessplanit journey at this point, so he has seen both sides of the story.

"We were doing a lot of our stuff manually and all of those admin processes were really time-consuming," he said. They were using realms of spreadsheets alongside software like Microsoft Suite, which wasn't designed to fit their needs. 

With mandatory training courses a major part of their offering, it's vital that St Luke's can keep track of delegate records and progress, something that was challenging with disparate systems and manual processes.

"Things got forgotten - it was a difficult process," Nye explained. The team was bogged down with admin, which stifled their customers' experience and St Luke's ability to grow.

The accessplanit solution 

“There's no way we'd be able to reach the amount of people we have this year without a system in place that can automate everything."

Nye Rawlings | Project ECHO Administration Coordinator at St Luke's Hospice Sheffield 

Implementation 

At accessplanit, we have a thorough implementation process to ensure you are set up for success, including a structured plan and a dedicated Implementation Manager.

Nye thought their Implementation Manager was really helpful and enjoyed getting to grips with the accessplanit platform early on. He also praised our Customer Support Advisors for delivering engaging platform training sessions. 

They also had a sandbox environment, meaning they could practise using the platform without affecting real data. "We had that all the way through until we launched the actual live site, so that was really useful."

Key features

So, since implementation, what are the key features that have made Nye's day-to-day tasks easier? He mentioned these in particular:

Automation

accessplanit's powerful automation tools reduce the need for monotonous admin tasks. Workflows are set up to complete tasks at set times according to triggers, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. 

"This has been one of the most useful things for us - not having to manually go in and check that things have been sent," Nye said.  

Continue reading to find out what tasks they have automated. 

Communications

Using automation and one centralised system for documentation, it's now much easier for St Luke's to communicate with customers. Nye explained that this is vital for sending delegates the resources they need before and after the course, such as certificates. 

Using email templates attached to workflows, Nye can rely on accessplanit to send the right information to the right people at the right time. 

Surveys 

This has been vital for the surveys St Luke's use to monitor delegate progress. This important task was time-consuming and difficult to manage before accessplanit. 

As Nye explained, "Surveys are a big thing for us because we need to measure whether someone's knowledge has improved. We have a pre-course survey and post-course survey, which beforehand meant checking who's registered then sending the surveys out to them, and checking who's completed it." 

"Whereas now, someone books on a course and it automatically sends them the survey email." 

Reporting

Effective reporting is also imperative for St Luke's Hospice due to the volume of reports that they require. "We have a lot of external stakeholders that want to know numbers and who's attended from where and what sessions have had the best attendance," Nye said.

He explained how before accessplanit, his workload would build up with these requirements. "There are eight different NHS organisations in South Yorkshire, and each of them want three different reports. They need to know exactly who's attended the mandatory sessions and who still needs to attend a course."

"So we've set up a lot of automated reports for that. That's saved a lot of time - not having to manually go into our spreadsheets and send them. That's been really useful."

Course management

In addition, it's now easier for Nye and the team to manage the range of courses they run per week. "We've got our mandatory courses for NHS staff which are continuously rolling and about five or six other courses that are running at the moment," Nye explained.

accessplanit uses course templates, which include all of the key information about a course and can be replicated and scheduled well in advance. There's no need to manually schedule each course over and over again, reducing information rekeying and human error. 

Online booking

Choosing accessplanit also supported St Luke's in setting up an on-brand, user-friendly course booking system. From the St Luke's website, delegates can easily see upcoming courses, book their place online and receive all the resources they need instantly. 

Support 

"[The support team] genuinely want to help you."

Nye Rawlings | Project ECHO Administration Coordinator at St Luke's Hospice Sheffield 

It's not just the accessplanit software that helps St Luke's Hospice, but also the service provided by our expert team. Our support goes far beyond implementation into the Adopt and Optimise stages of our Proven Process. Our customers have a dedicated Customer Success Manager, a Support Team available online and on the phone, and regular free platform training events. 

Nye explained how much he appreciates being able to quickly reach the accessplanit Support Team. "I've definitely noticed that any questions I've had, it's been really quick and the staff are more than happy to help me." 

He continued, "It's almost like there's no wrong answer. They genuinely want to help you."

Photo: Nye's quote when asked why he loves accessplanit at our customer event, Connect

The results

"You've got so much more free time to do business and increase your overall numbers."

Nye Rawlings | Project ECHO Administration Coordinator at St Luke's Hospice Sheffield 

So what effects have these useful training management software features had on St Luke's Hospice Sheffield?

Time saving 

Automation has eliminated a lot of time-consuming admin tasks for St Luke's Hospice. Manually sending hundreds of emails to delegates, pulling data for reports and updating course information are things of the past. This means they have more time to optimise their offerings. 

 "You've got so much more free time to do business and increase your overall numbers," Nye said. 

Streamlining operations

Whereas Nye was previously using lots of different, unsuitable software to complete his day-to-day tasks, such as scheduling courses, this can now be done all in one place. 

Without the need to delve into hundreds of spreadsheets to access records, use separate software to create documentation and manually send this to each delegate, their efficiency has increased greatly. 

"This week we've had 11 or 12 sessions running and recently we've had even 15 or 16. This time last year, I don't think we would be able to run that many sessions in one week." Nye said. "I think we were doing about five a week or maybe even less sometimes." 

Scaling up

Because it's now so much easier to manage these courses, alongside the time saved thanks to reduced admin, St Luke's has scaled up and been able to offer more courses to more people, boosting their positive impact. 

"The amount of people we've trained has gone up massively," Nye said. "In previous years, we were training maybe 3000 or 4000 people a year, but this financial year we've trained 5000 people and we're hoping to expand on that next year." 

"There's no way we'd be able to reach 5000 this year without a system in place that can automate everything and keep a record of all our courses and things like that."

Improving customer experience

St Luke's Hospice Sheffield place value on providing a great experience for their customers. With automated workflows, delegates get all the resources they need in a timely fashion. 

"The process for the end user is more of a seamless experience which is the main thing you want I think - to just make it easy and accessible for the people booking on the course."

This is relevant for other key stakeholders too, such as the organisations that make bookings. They require regular reports to aid compliance and with dedicated workflows, they get up-to-date, accurate data when they expect it. 

"I used to get emails all the time from different bosses in the NHS saying, can you send me this? Can you send me that? But I don't get many anymore," Nye told me.

Data insights

With all delegate information in one central system, and access to powerful reporting tools and automated reports that pull the most important data, St Luke's has improved business visibility. With better data insights comes improved decision-making. 

This is important for their training courses for NHS staff across a range of institutions and locations. As Nye explained, "We do a lot of work with care homes so we gather data about what care homes they've come from, what organisations they work for, the type of people that are coming on our courses." 

Next steps

So, what are St Luke's Hospice Sheffield's goals for the future? Nye said that they are hoping to continue to grow their delegate numbers and move with the trends of the industry. 

"Our courses are ever-changing depending on what people within the health and social care sector want to learn about and what feels important. The world and especially healthcare is changing so fast, so I think ECHO will be a really good model to use for educating staff in the sector."

"The main thing is just continuing to grow and just keep offering courses that people feel are useful."

He said that they will attend some of our free webinars to refresh their platform knowledge - and said that attending our customer event Connect was really useful for this. 

Would St Luke's Hospice Sheffield recommend accessplanit?

"I would definitely recommend it for a training company that wants a system to help them take their business to the next level."

Nye Rawlings | Project ECHO Administration Coordinator at St Luke's Hospice Sheffield

I asked Nye if he would recommend accessplanit. He said, "I would definitely recommend it for a training company that wants a system to help them take their business to the next level. If you want to progress, I would definitely recommend it." 

"And I just want to say thank you to the whole team for saving me a lot of admin time that I didn't have before!" he added.