FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions is a resource for answers to common questions about HSPnet.
- Click on a specific question below or scroll through the complete list.
What is HSPnet?
The Health Sciences Placement Network (HSPnet) is an electronic system for improving the management of Practice Education activities for health sciences students. Practice Education management activities include coordinating clinical placements (also know as preceptorships, clerkships, internships, or practica) and related activities such as policy management and agreement tracking, preceptor recognition, instructor assignment and scheduling, collaborative resolution of scheduling conflicts and interprofessional placements. HSPnet streamlines manual processes for managing practice education, improves communications and information sharing, and brings together multiple local data sets to provide better system-wide information.
Who uses HSPnet?
The primary users of HSPnet are those involved in placing students (typically course leaders and Placement Coordinators in educational institutions) and those who receive students (typically Receiving Coordinators, program managers, unit managers, and educators in health service organizations). Other users of HSpnet include instructors, senior managers, and students.
How does HSPnet improve student placement processes?
HSPnet is a set of integrated functions that enable participating agencies to:
- maintain online profiles for:
- students, instructors, and courses/programs in placing agencies
- sites, destinations and supervisors/preceptors in receiving agencies
- Coordinate requests and placements
- Monitor status of requests
- Coordinate student arrangements such as consent forms, orientation packages, and prerequisites for immunization status and CPR certification.
- Manage documents
- Manage access to agency information systems for students and instructors
- Generate reports
- Publish and access online policies and guidelines
- Develop and track Educational Contracts or Affiliation Agreements
- Enable students and faculty to access online orientation content
- Track student employment including under-graduate and new graduate hiring programs
Can students access HSPnet?
Students can use HSPnet to view and prioritize available placement opportunities, and submit online applications for projects, co-op placements, or employment opportunities.
How does HSPnet support collaboration and capacity building?
HSPnet supports the critical role of intermediaries that coordinate placements on behalf of others. Scheduling tools support online collaborative resolution of scheduling overlaps, and custom reports that are available to support organizations or groups that review placement capacity issues or facilitate program planning and health human resource planning.
In addition to facilitating student placements, could HSPnet be used for tracking other related activities?
HSPnet is designed to accommodate agencies who wish to use the same system to track “internal” placements such as placements between hospitals, preceptor/mentor training, and new staff orientation. These placements will be counted differently than inter-agency placements, but will contribute to the overall data set on practice education involving students, new graduates and employees.
How is student privacy protected?
Information privacy and data stewardship are primary considerations of HSPnet design, development and ongoing enhancement. In general, agencies have access only to information relating to their own organization and users access student information on a need-to-know basis only as per their organizational role.
We are an educational program that has no HSPnet user account. How can we submit a student placement request to an agency that uses HSPnet?
Contact the Receiving Agency and ask them to send you a guest link so that you can enter a student placement request for their agency onto HSPnet. If your contact does not know how to do this: please ask your contact to ask the Receiving coordinator/service contact or student placement office at their agency.
Does HSPnet support out-of-province placements?
Placement activities often cross provincial or even national boundaries, and requests can also be received from non-healthcare organizations – HSPnet allows tracking of this activity.