Site Spark in Action: How Emeritus Reinvented Staff Training

Joshua Carey and Blair Stevens from Emeritus Research, recipients of the 2025 Site Spark Award, share the story behind their custom-built education resource library designed to empower staff, strengthen confidence, and improve knowledge retention. Hear why learner-focused training matters, how creativity can coexist with regulatory rigor, and what other clinical research sites can take away from building training solutions in-house.

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Welcome to SCRS talks provided by the Society for Clinical Research Sites. Thank you for joining us as we explore the latest insights, trends, and innovations shaping clinical research today. I'm Jimmy Bechtel, the Chief Site Success Officer with SCRS, and I'm joined today by joshua Carey, the quality and training manager with Emeritus Research and Blair Stevens, the training coordinator with Emeritus. It's great to have both of you with me today. I'm excited to talk about your recent recipient of the SCRS Site Spark award. But before we get into that and what brought that to fruition and some of the fun details around it, I'd first like to start learning a little bit more about the two of you and maybe a little bit more about emeritus. So Joshua, I'll start with you. If you wouldn't mind kicking us off with an introduction.

Speaker 2 0:46

Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you for having us here. This is pretty exciting and new for, myself and Blair to be doing a podcast. Uh, yeah, my name's Joshua Carey. My background is originally in nursing, so I was a nurse for five years before I moved over to research where I then became a research nurse. In that I worked in Alzheimer's for. Four years doing different trials, mainly sponsor driven. I moved across to emeritus Research, began a quality role, uh, and have been here since 2022, uh, late 2022. So yeah, now my quality experience is heavily based in private and as much public. But yeah, that's a quick summary of me.

Speaker 1:25

Awesome. Thanks Joshua and Blair, we'll go to you now. Okay.

Speaker 3 1:30

My name's Blair. I am the training coordinator at Emeritus. I've been with Emeritus for just under six years now in a range of different roles, starting on the trial teams as a research assistant and a coordinator. Moving on to being a team lead for a couple of years, and now I've been moved into the training space for coming up two years now as well. So. Really, really exciting area to be in. A big hot topic at the moment in the industry as well.

Speaker 2:00

Absolutely. Very exciting and, cool to see that there's an organization that has teams dedicated to this very challenging area. But, uh, we will dive a little bit into some of what you all have done here in the training space to innovate and which is really exciting. So first off, congratulations to you and to emeritus research for the. 2025 Site Spark Award recipient. So, Joshua, I'll start with you. Maybe start us off by giving our listeners an overview of this really innovative and exciting program.

Speaker 2 2:31

Yeah, so Earl is an education resource library. That's where the name Earl comes from. What it does is basically encompass video learning short form education, like booklets and small pages. And it's all based around empowering our staff to take on their own professional development and really lead their own training. Earl's Built using two main technologies, which were Canva and Scribe which are two software platforms using a lot of ai. And that allowed us to customize it, making it a really engaging thing. But yeah, the, the main thing with. With the whole project was that it was designed to be a way that staff could find resources that were easy to understand, that were engaging without having to dig through a thousand things or Google a thousand things, or wait for someone with the answer to be at work or free or not in a patient visit. So it's all really based on empowering.

Speaker 3:21

Very interesting and exciting and, and, uh, we know a very important part of effective training is that probably key word there is, is empowerment on that. So, so Blair, what inspired then your team as you started to embark on this journey to build this custom training and development platform? Instead of relying on the plethora of standard tools and vendor solutions that already exist, again, what made you all decide, let's do this ourselves.

Speaker 3 3:57

Yeah, absolutely. We found so many options, like you said, that were available. However, none of them really captured. Everything that we wanted. Um, and none of them could be customized to the level that we wanted to encapsulate all of our site processes. It was also going to be quite costly for the number of staff we have. So we are two sites, but we have about 160 staff, so quite a lot of users that would need to be in those systems. What inspired us to then build Earl was that we needed that content. Available that met the needs of our staff. But then also met all the regulatory standards in clinical trials. So we went out and we had quite a few conversations with different people at emeritus. And when we spoke to them about the training that we originally had, which is our SOPs in our guidelines and our black and white documents that are still absolutely so important was this bit of a shutdown reaction? When. We spoke about that training. So that led us into Canva, which is a really well known creative platform. It allowed us to make more engaging, creative colorful interactive resources that we find people are more likely to reach for. And that also carried across into the language that we're now using in this content as well. So our SOPs, our guidelines, they're quite jargony. There's a lot of. Words in them. Our content that we've made for Earl is a lot more conversational and it's designed for people to get the answers. Through those documents in the same way that they would get that answer if they turn to their team lead or a colleague and ask the same question. Absolutely. We still have our SOPs in our guidelines and this content supports those s SOPs and guidelines. But it's just designed to be a little bit more fun. Then the solutions that we had and that are available

Speaker 5:53

Interesting. So it's more about a personalized, uh, engagement type of approach and something that meets the needs of, of the learner as opposed to. What we see a lot in training and, and, you know, maybe, maybe talk a little bit about this, Joshua or, or Blair, less about kind of ticking the box for the training and more about making sure that the learner is again, engaged and and active in what their learning experience needs to be. Right?

Speaker 2 6:22

I think that the, the important thing is you need to be honest with yourself when you're doing something like this and not think. SOPs guidelines. This is how we train people. Just have to do it. You have to look at the staff you have, you have to look at the resources you have and go, right, well, what is working, what's not working? And if you're not honest, during that point, you won't make content that will actually meet that need because you're not acknowledging the common pitfalls or normal things of human nature that are a big, long, black and white document. Might be interesting to some people, but for most people it doesn't engage them. It's, it's too complicated and they don't want to. And you see that with. Consent forms, we bring consent forms down to a level that are more understandable 'cause we want people to get information out of the content. So it's the same approach really.

Speaker 7:07

That's excellent. And, and Joshua, maybe continue helping us understand and lean into that a little bit. You emphasized. And, and Blair alluded to this as well, making that training again, engaging and less a document, less checkbox, less, let's give them a bunch of materials and hope and expect them to learn it. What impact then, have you seen in areas like staff confidence and efficiency and, and truly what, arguably is the most important part, the knowledge retention since launching this program.

Speaker 2 7:39

So in A general sense, before we go into more stats kind of information, um, one of the things we've noticed, which is really fun for us is when someone will come up to us and say, Hey, I was reading the playbook, or I was watching the scribe. Or they'll send us a screenshot of something and they'll say, Hey, this bit here in the, playbook. Can you, can you explain this a bit more or can we adjust this a bit? Because when we see that, we see people are engaging with the content a lot and we're happy to update and change things. Um, but it's, it's really exciting for us when we see people using it, referencing it, referring it, or we hear someone say, check Earl, or Jump on Earl, or, I learnt this from there. It's, it's really exciting. So that engagement's really good, uh, in terms of numbers, in the. So we've, after two months, we did a survey and we'll do another one at six months, another one at a year. And we'll keep looking at it, but our initial survey in the first two months had 89, 80 9% of our staff gave us quite positive feedback. It was all, really enjoying or really liking, or because it was a scale we had no negative feedback on that. It was all. The worst part of feedback we got was neutral, just saying they're still learning or they're not engaging with it just a little bit. And that was that smaller percent, which is really exciting for us. But we can work on that and improve. But we're really happy with an 89% approval rating. So far. Uh, in the four months that Earl's been active, it's had over 2,600 visits to it, so we know it's getting used a lot. I mean, if you put that across 167 staff, that's, that's a lot of engagement. So we're really happy with that. And then overall. I suppose if we're looking at the future what we're trying to do is basically make a live site that's going to adjust and grow with the company. So we're hoping that with this continued engagement, we'll have more conversations about how we can improve the content, how we can add more things, and then that will kind of develop into itself and will grow and build. Anything else you wanna add to that Blair?

Speaker 3 9:26

I don't think so. I think, you know, what you've mentioned is really the big impact that we've been looking for. And we're hoping that as Earl grows and as our team grows, that Earl will will grow with our teams. Is kind of the, the number one goal would be, would be that Earl would grow with the teams. And, you know, we're also trying to make sure that our staff. Have the confidence to do their work and answer these questions and go into patient visits with confidence or into monitor visits with confidence, and that they have these tools available to them at their leisure, in their own time.

Speaker 10:04

It's really interesting guys and, and really exciting as well because it's this concept of meeting the learner where they are and not. Really approaching things from a learner perspective. I think, I think we've emphasized this point now, but meeting the learner. Where they need to be and making sure that we're designing things according to what their needs are. But also right, of course, maintaining the integrity of the training itself and making sure that they get the knowledge that they need to get, but just in a more effective and, and respectful way. It's something we talk about a lot within, uh, SCRS and you know, particularly, I know you both are, are aware of the cut 25 program and that's what a lot of the focus. A lot of what our discovery and our learnings are through that program is that training is oftentimes. Really boiled down to just the fact that it doesn't respect the learner for a variety of of different reasons. We're not here to get into today, but what I really like again about what you all are doing is that you are respecting the learner because you are learners and you're developing things for your teammates. So it's, it's, it's kind of this concept of like. Buy the people for the people, right? It's, it's buy the trainers for the, for the trainers and the, the people that are gonna be using it. There, you're self-developing these tools there, which is really, really awesome to see. So, so Blair, I I want to kind of just shift gears to you now a little bit too, and, you know, the, the, the program blends practicality again with creativity using some of the tools that you mentioned, right? Canva, scribe teams. What maybe did you learn from developing a digital platform in-house and all the trials and tribulations that I know you both went through, and as well as the team in, in the development and the testing and the implementation and the growth of the program? Really with the spirit of what other sites might be able to apply to their own training programs or maybe some of their own, you know, self-developed areas.

Speaker 3 11:59

Yeah. Two like really big things that we learned quite early on. One thing was that we, you absolutely have to consult and collaborate with those experts in those fields. You know, Josh was a nurse I have a science background. Neither of us can write really good content for pharmacy or our finance team, for example. So we really had to go to them. And ask them what they needed and how they do these things and what would be helpful for them in the day to day. And, and with that, they're then more likely to use the content as well because they have a little bit more ownership of it, um, or over it, rather than. Me just going and telling them this is what they should know. And that's, you know, we've, we've learned that that doesn't always work. And using platforms like Canva and Scribe conversations that Joshua and I had at the summit, everyone was like blown away that we built this website. And then when we explained that, you know, Canva's actually really easy to use, you know, it has all these templates and it has all these things in it that you can rely on. Building the website wasn't, you know, the actual nitty gritty blocks, building blocks of the website wasn't actually the hard part. You know, Canva and Scribe and these tools made that quite easy. So definitely go and, you know, don't try and reinvent the wheel. Go and use these tools that are available to you as well. And Josh, do you wanna talk about some of the other things we've learned as well?

Speaker 2 13:32

One of the key things that I think we learned throughout the process, 'cause it was, I mean the development process was, we started with the idea. Then we put the idea down. 'cause we were like, oh God, that's too hard. And then we picked that idea back up again. And then in that small time that we put it down, we noticed that a lot changed. And then as we did it, we'd start writing, you know, a playbook, which is one of the content pieces that we'd start a scribe and then we kind of pull a thread and we'd find a new thing. So what we found is a really important thing to be, is to be flexible. Uh, with how you're going to use your content, how you're going to present it, and how it's gonna go on from that point. And it goes back to that thing we were talking about with making sure your system can grow with the company. Doesn't hold it back or doesn't not meet the needs anymore and become like an external process. Again, not hating on external process. They're amazing in the people that work on them do amazing work. But, what we found was that if we needed to have the content that would grow with our company, and so one of the ways we combated that was we, again, with using things like Scribe and Canberra. All the links are live, so when we update something in the background, we don't have to take the website down. We don't have to do a big rigor room role of kind of going through, taking it off, working on it separately, reviewing, doing all that. We can do it live and we can do it quite quickly. So we can go in and say, okay, we wanna update this bit and this bit. I'll let Blair know. We'll go in, we'll double check it, we'll reach out to the team and we'll have it up and fixed within a matter of hours, which is fantastic. So it just gives us that flexibility and makes it a very quick and easy process. And I suppose the last thing would be don't be afraid to make content that is site specific. So I think in a lot of cases it's more helpful for staff than a generic training content. I know the easier option especially with time constraints and we've got patient loads and cost and all of these things, but if you put more effort into your customized and your personal training for your staff, it will reduce your regulatory concerns like CAPAs and serious breach. And in the long run, it'll make training that actually suits your staff better. You'll have stronger staff. You'll have staff that feel confident in their role, and then that bleeds into the patient experience as well. If you've got staff that can go in and they have that confidence, they know what they're doing, they're moving through it, and they know they can ask. If they can find any resources they need, then that participant's gonna see that and they're gonna get to benefit from that knowledge and that confidence, which is what we want. We Want happy staff, happy participants, and we wanna move through that properly. So I think, You know, flexibility and don't be afraid to start a project like this.

Speaker 16:00

It's great information, and uh, very, I hope inspirational and a great place for us to leave our conversation here. For those that are listening, that have thought about maybe doing this or want to reinvigorate or maybe enhance the way that they offer training to their teams, that, you all have found success in it. Um, it's very, very exciting. It was great to see your presentation there in person and, and also talk to you guys about it a little bit at the Australian New Zealand summit that was held back in the summer here in the United States, back in July. But, with that guys you know, thank you for your time today. It's about all the time we have really. Glad to have been able to learn a little bit more about it and share it with our listenership. Again, congratulations on the recipient of this year's award, to both of you and to emeritus research and keep up the good work. Guys. Thank you.

Speaker 2 16:47

Thank you so much. And thank you to the whole team in S CRS.

Speaker 16:51

Absolutely. Well, I encourage everyone that is listening to make sure that you. Direct your attention to some of our other site focused resources made available on our website, my scrs.org, where you can learn about programs like Site Spark, review, past recipients, and maybe even submit yourselves for upcoming opportunities as well as our other publications and episodes of SCRS talks. Our site solutions summits are excellent opportunities to engage with our partners and those individuals like Blair and Joshua and the emeritus research team that are doing great things for the site community. Uh, but for now, thanks for listening, tuning in, and until next time, I.