Connecting the people, activity and evidence behind the journey to Fellowship
The Challenge
The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners (RNZCGP) needed a simpler, more connected way to understand the professional development journey of registrars as they progressed towards Fellowship.
Registrars develop through a combination of formal learning and work-based activity with clinical supervisors, mentors and peers. While the relationships between registrars and supervisors were recorded within the College’s Student Information System (SIS), the evidence of the activity taking place in the real world was often captured across paper records, spreadsheets and other disparate systems.
This created a disconnect. The College could see who was connected to whom, but not easily connect those relationships to the learning activities and evidence generated through those interactions.
The challenge was to bring these two worlds together, giving registrars and their supervisors appropriate visibility while ensuring supervisors could only access the work of their own registrars.
Our Partnership
Synapsys worked with RNZCGP to develop a plugin that connected the relationships held in the SIS with the College’s Learning Management System (LMS), Totara.
The solution automatically brought the relevant supervisor–registrar relationships into Totara and connected them to the activities and evidence associated with their professional development. This included meetings, seminars and face-to-face sessions, as well as documents and records arising from clinical visits and other activities.
The important part wasn’t simply moving information between systems. The plugin simplified the administration of complex relationships and transformed previously fragmented information into a coherent view within the LMS.
By automating the process and enforcing the appropriate visibility restrictions, supervisors could see the work of their own registrars, while the College gained a clearer picture of the development activity taking place across the programme.
The Impact
The solution has made professional development activity easier to manage, easier to access and easier to understand.
For RNZCGP, it means:
- Greater visibility of the activities and evidence contributing to a registrar’s professional development.
- Simpler administration of complex supervisor–registrar relationships through automated data flows rather than spreadsheets and manual processes.
- Reduced time and effort spent locating and manually collating information from disparate sources.
- Better-connected information, linking the relationships recorded in the SIS with the learning activity taking place in the LMS.
- More informed assessment, giving the College greater insight into a registrar’s development journey as they progress towards Fellowship.
For registrars and supervisors, the result is greater clarity around the learning and development activity taking place throughout the journey.
What was previously fragmented across paper records, spreadsheets and other systems is now brought together in a structured, accessible environment — providing a clearer picture of development and giving RNZCGP a stronger evidence base for understanding progression towards Fellowship.