Becoming a health care professional takes more than just study and practice.
Throughout our lives, we rely on health professionals and place trust in their expertise and ability to provide the highest quality care. However, behind this lies a complex and often unclear system that can leave us wondering what it takes for these individuals to become and remain such highly skilled experts.
Educating a clinician is not only about academic knowledge – it’s about experience, compliance, teamwork, infrastructure, and long-term strategy. This article breaks down the essential stakeholders, intricate pathways, and evolving systems that make it possible for us all to access safe, high-quality care from licensed health professionals.
Why health care organizations prioritize education
At their core, health care organizations exist to provide affordable, accessible, and high-quality care. In order to ensure a steady pipeline of talented clinicians, health systems must collaborate with various types of academic institutions to define and co-educate over 60 types of health professionals – including physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses, and allied health professionals. With patient population needs and best practices constantly evolving, clinical education is not just a singular event – it’s a critical and ongoing process.
When a clinician leaves an organization, the cost of turnover can range from 6 to 9 months of the annual salary for that role. If the provider is highly specialized, this cost can reach up to 200% of their salary.
The evolution of clinical education
Teaching clinicians has been common in medical settings throughout the years, but the evolution of health care has created new and different challenges as it relates to educating the next generation of health professionals. Before the rise of health systems, educating clinicians was largely a volunteer effort wherein a hospital or clinician would partner with a local school to collaboratively educate new physicians or nurses. These community-based entities coordinated their collective efforts to educate learners and identified evolving patient needs and learning objectives along the way. However, teaching and coordination became more complex as these organizations consolidated through mergers or acquisitions and care delivery methods changed and expanded. The role of clinicians, faculty, and administrators evolved in turn.
In today’s leading health systems, education is a coordinated and strategic operation. Teaching is still a noble act, but clinicians are less likely to volunteer without formal recognition or compensation. With growing complexity, teaching now requires even more advanced infrastructure and oversight.
The role of the clinical education team
When you walk into a hospital or clinic, a team of professionals works together to deliver care. A registrar checks you in, a nurse or nurse assistant might take your vitals, and then a physician, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant handles the remainder of your appointment. You may also encounter students or residents gaining experience under supervision.
Providing care isn’t transactional, and neither is learning how to provide it. Educating clinicians requires health systems to orchestrate a seamless, collaborative environment where multiple roles interact and patient care and learning coexist. In the academic community, this is referred to as a clinical learning environment, and designing these environments is a significant and evolving challenge for clinical and administrative leaders.
To address this, health systems rely on specialized clinical education teams to support learning efforts within their patient care units. These teams are often structured to support unique professions and are customized to an organization’s mission, strategy, and patient needs. Their work is essential and increasingly reliant on data and systems.
Most common org. structure
The core responsibilities of this team often include:
- Building and managing relationships with schools and academic partners
- Meeting accreditation and regulatory requirements
- Preparing faculty to educate safely and effectively
- Credentialing clinical educators and students
- Generating workforce insights and forecasting workforce supply
- Demonstrating how education efforts benefit the communities they serve
The team interacts regularly with other departments within the organization – including patient safety, clinical operations, medical staff management, information technology, patient access, human resources, and more – to ensure a successful educational experience and transition into practice.
How clinicians are educated
Becoming a licensed clinician requires years of study, practical experience, and credentialing.
Here’s a high-level overview:
| Years 1-4 | Years 5-8 | Years 9-13 | Years 13+ | Phase V | |
| Physician | College or University | Medical School | Residency (Required to be eligible for board exam) | Fellowship (Somewhat optionally, but generally required) | Pass board exam and renew every 10 years |
| Physician Assistant | College or University | Physician Assistant School | Pass Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination (PANCE) | ||
| Advanced Practice Nurse | Nursing School | Advanced Practice Nursing Program | Pass national certification exam | ||
| Nurse | Nursing School | Pass National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) |
Education typically includes lectures, simulation, real-time patient care observation, and supervised practice. Each step ensures clinicians are prepared academically, technically, and ethically to provide care.
Infrastructure and operating systems
Because clinical education is a long-term investment, its goals include keeping the cost of administration low and the accuracy of the insights trustworthy. This is where a leader may opt to implement software systems to reduce the need for administrative growth and focus investments on the clinical learning environment.
Internal Systems
- Clinical Capacity Management: Teams must assess how many students can be accommodated in each unit and shift without compromising care.
- Rotation Placement & Scheduling: Students rotate across hospitals, departments, and specialties. Each student, or group of students, must be placed into a setting and scheduled within the context of their clinical program’s course requirements and the clinical environment’s practice schedule.
- Credentialing and Onboarding: Coordinating onboarding is often the most time-intensive task and can include managing ID badges, EMR access, training modules, and documentation across sites.
- Automation Opportunities: Automating a department’s student preferences, onboarding workflows, or even offboarding requirements saves administrative time and allows for scale without hiring additional support.
External Systems
- Academic Affiliation Agreements: Health systems may partner with anywhere from a dozen to hundreds of schools. General agreement templates may be used, but what is agreed to in terms of sharing expertise and clinical capacity requires ongoing operational management. Leveraging a system that helps a clinical site and its affiliated programs co-manage the changes to the clinical learning environment in real-time is critical for scale and ongoing relationship management.
- Data Sharing and Compliance: Organizations must securely exchange rosters, schedules, evaluations, and performance data with external institutions.
These systems form the digital backbone of clinician education by tracking individual learner progress and providing macro-level insights into future workforce pipelines and readiness.
Why it’s worth it
Teaching clinicians is a long-term investment that requires willing educators, administrative coordination, supportive technology, and a commitment to both patients and learners. The payoff is worth it, however, as this pipeline provides a well-prepared and resilient workforce that sustains care quality across generations.
The infrastructure we build today – systems, partnerships, and academic programs – shapes who will be there to care for us tomorrow. Understanding what it really takes to educate a clinician is the first step toward sustaining that future.
Need assistance building an infrastructure under which students, staff, and administrators alike can thrive?
Clinician Nexus can help! Learn more about putting Student Management to work for your organization.
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