Thanks, I may reach out to you directly about some specifics... but this is very helpful.
We currently have an Access Database for Training Records (*gasp, I know*). It's been developed to create the appearance of a full-fledged application - but at the end of the day it's still being developed in Access, with all its quirks. The institution is transitioning to Workday but it's training module won't support us - it requires every training entry to have a class, instructor, and certifier - FOR EVERY TRANSACTION. In our environment, we on-board technicians and they proceed through about 150 activities during the first 30 days - where the supervisor is signing them off in batches of 5-15 over a certain period. Creating a class, trainer, and certifier for each one of those activities was a non-starter for us. Another group is evaluating the creation of a custom training app in Microsoft Power Apps to serve the scientific and clinical needs here. However, it would be great if we could just rework our training curriculum to fit in Cayuse Training.
The other concern is we currently have about 1000 training activities, but I'm working to reduce them down to about 250. We have an issue with redundancy and poor consistency with syntax across those 1000 activities...
- Sample Collection from Rodents
- Sample Collection from Mouse
- Collection of Samples from Rodents
- Rodent Sample Collection
I'm working through all these activities to remove species from these activities, so they can be assigned using the species selection on the protocol. We're also evaluating the standardization of the syntax and modifier-use within the activities (i.e. "Collection of Samples" vs "Sample Collection", etc).
The lack of bulk entry is a concern - we actually use it frequently with new hires to onboard all of their training in a single "append"
statement to the training transactions table.
As for Dashboards and Reporting, I have Power BI already producing dashboards and reports for Vet Care data, Census data, and Protocol Content data. I'll have to recreate our access reports in Power BI... we just won't have the custom, itemized "roles" in Cayuse. I'm just planning a bit of trial and error with the TEST server while we figure if this can work for us.
Do you think we're comparable in size with our training bandwidth? We are roughly at - 180+ protocols, 35+ species, 45,000+ cages of research animals, 100+ ARC departmental staff are various levels of technical skill, 1800+ research personnel (on protocols). We have pretty frequent turnover in departmental staff either transitioning into lab roles or moving to other facilities/careers.
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Evins Wardlaw
Systems Analyst of Bioresources
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-20-2023 15:53
From: Cheryl Cheney
Subject: Question on Vivarium Operations Staff & Training documentation in Cayuse
Hi Evins,
We're still on-prem, too, but I think I can provide shed some light, since we have had the training module since 2014.
There's no way that I know of to link a curriculum to specific user roles in the way you envision (unless you get a customization, I suppose!). But if you have trainings that are only offered for specific roles, you could use the "Event Type" feature to designate it that way (we use it to indicate whether a training is online, a presentation, hands-on, an SOP, an annual refresher, or a vivarium access requirement).
You can use the module as a way to record trainings for personnel, regardless of whether or not they are on a protocol or have any of the relevant procedures/materials linked to a given training assigned to them as protocol responsibilities. Unfortunately, you can only enter training info for one course taken by one person at a time; if one person took multiple courses or multiple people took one course, the number of separate entries you'd need to make would correspond to the number of courses in the first instance or the number of people in the second. There's scope to request a customization for bulk uploading data from an Excel file or other source, though.
It's fairly easy to run a report to show you the trainings that someone has already completed, or who has completed a specific training. However, it's impossible to run a report to show you the trainings that someone has to complete (e.g., based on their assigned protocol responsibilities), unless you have access to the background database info and the know-how to extract it (our IT team helped me out with that, and we're both pretty sharp (if I do say so myself :P), but it wasn't really a straightforward process (feel free to contact me offline if you'd like more info about the info we captured)).
You could add several hundred different training courses to your list, and you could set it up so that some will appear in someone's Personnel Training Profile just by virtue of their being listed on a protocol, or by virtue of working with any animal species whatsoever; as you seem aware, trainings can also be tied to specific animal species, activities, or materials. You can also run reports to get either the full list of trainings or filtered lists, just to get a handle on all the courses you've entered. However, you will need database access and expertise to externally run a report that identifies which trainings you have tied to which species, activities, or materials.
In a protocol, the training profiles only update in alignment with protocol updates. When a protocol, amendment, or renewal is approved, the Training Profiles within it will include training certification dates only up to that point. Not until the next amendment or renewal is prepared will they update, so you'd need to rely on reports in the interim to double-check someone's actual training status. I'm not sure whether you can set the system up to enable PIs to do those checks themselves or not; we haven't.
I hope that was a helpful overview!
Cheers,
Cheryl
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Cheryl Cheney, CPIA
IACUC Coordinator/Compliance Specialist
Biogen
Cambridge, MA
Original Message:
Sent: 06-15-2023 11:53
From: Evins Wardlaw
Subject: Question on Vivarium Operations Staff & Training documentation in Cayuse
We have yet to make the jump to Cayuse Cloud, so please be aware that my only experience is with the Cayuse on-Prem version.
For those who have successfully implemented Cayuse Training, did you enroll your Husbandry Staff and Vivarium Maintenance Staff into a protocol? Did you find the Training module "deep" enough to allow for a large training activity catalog? We are currently reducing our Training Curriculum down to around 250-300 activities - it was previously up around 1000 because species was included in the title of many training activities... which grew the training activity list, exponentially. We have concerns that the Training Module may be too shallow to support a full training curriculum, while maintaining a user experience that avoids becoming quite frustrating to navigate (i.e locating a particular training from a list of several hundred, or a thousand, activities). Lastly, did you find a method for linking curriculum to certain roles? We know you can link courses to species, drugs, and procedures.
ADDITONAL CONTEXT
We had hoped to use the Cayuse training module for our Vivarium Operations Staff, along with the research staff. Unfortunately, we quickly discovered that the Training module required association with a protocol for the module to be utilized effectively (i.e. associating training activities to species, procedures, drugs, etc). We are currently evaluating the creation of a "Vivarium Operations" Protocol - that would include all our departmental staff and operational/maintenance staff... and then we'd include all our species PLUS add a "Facility" species (where zero value per diems can be set up for hardware - racks, bsc, etc.). The idea would be that an RFID cage card could be printed and affixed to the facility hardware, then it gets automatically scanned and spatially located while we're already conducting our RFID animal census. We understand this isn't the "best" solution - but we're currently limited because Cayuse is the origin point & system of record for the Cage Cards... so we are bound to it if we wish to capture multiple data points from a single RFID scan, instead of asking them to duplicate, or triplicate, the scans with different applications.
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Evins Wardlaw
Systems Analyst of Bioresources
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
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