If you are a school coordinator or faculty member responsible for onboarding students and/or instructors, keep an eye on our calendar of events to stay up to date with upcoming open enrollment dates, instructor orientation and new onboarding workshops. These workshops are hosted by nursing student education coordinators virtually twice per year.

Geisinger’s nursing student education team has distributed an onboarding checklist and timeline that will benefit you and others who assist with onboarding students and instructors. Haven’t received a copy of this document? Email nsg_affiliates@geisinger.edu.

After our nursing placement coordinators at each site return final approvals for rotations during open enrollment, you are free to onboard students immediately (you no longer need to wait until four to six weeks before clinicals). The links to the new onboarding portals are below. 

Nursing student portal
Nursing instructor portal

Here’s what you can expect once your school has completed your onboarding

If you are a new student (not employed by Geisinger):

•  Universal login: Your login letter will be sent to you four weeks before the first day of clinicals.
•  Vaccine compliance: You will have two weeks (or less) to submit your proof of vaccinations into our virtual submission portal once you receive your login letter from your school coordinator or from a Geisinger coordinator. You must be compliant by your start date or it will be delayed by two weeks to give you time to submit. If you’re still not compliant by the delayed start date, your account will be rescinded, and you’ll be unable to rotate at Geisinger for the semester.
•  Epic access/GOALS: Epic and GOALS access does not begin until the start date provided by your school during onboarding. You will log into Epic and GOALS with the universal login provided in your login letter. During the two weeks leading up to your first day of clinicals, you must log into your GOALS account and complete any outstanding courses assigned to you, as well as any pre-clinical unit orientation your instructors want you to complete. When all GOALS courses are completed, you can begin clinicals on time.

Universal login: At the time you become a student, you will not receive a separate universal login (login letter) for your student role. You will continue to log in with your employee universal login credentials to access the network.

Vaccine compliance: Employed students do not need to resubmit proof of vaccination. During onboarding, your student and employee roles are merged under your employee role in Workday. All employees at Geisinger are required to be fully vaccinated or have approved exemptions, and the compliance will automatically apply to your student role. 

Epic access/GOALS: If you require Epic access as a student, you will be issued a different Epic login ID, which you will use while in your student role. At the time our team sends you your Epic login ID, we’ll also send you the list of GOALS courses you need to complete. Log into your employee GOALS account, search for each course by title or course code and complete them. All courses must be completed once per calendar year to be considered compliant.

If you are a visiting nursing instructor responsible for visiting nursing students’ clinical education, keep an eye on our calendar of events on our homepage. This will allow you to stay up to date on important events, including clinical faculty orientation. 

Also be sure to review the following documents related to your orientation. The PowerPoint contains essential patient care information to guide Geisinger quality standards of care and the document contains information regarding visiting student and instructor expectations.

•  Geisinger clinical instructor presentation
•  Geisinger student and instructor expectations
•  Self-directed Instructor Orientation Checklist

Most visiting nursing student programs have a coordinator at their school that onboards students/faculty into the Geisinger system. After you have been onboarded into the nursing instructor portal, our team receives notifications of submission(s) and proceeds with onboarding the instructor(s) into Geisinger’s nonemployee system (NE Profile). This will automatically request the instructor's network access and GOALS access. 

Once you are in the nonemployee system, we submit Epic access requests for each instructor. After all Epic access requests are completed by Epic security, we can request Omnicell access by submitting the instructor(s) information to Identity & Access Management (IAM). When IAM is finished processing, we provide your Omnicell login ID and temporary password to either the school coordinator(s) to distribute to you, or to you directly.

You will receive universal login information approximately two weeks before the start date provided during onboarding. You’ll then need to complete vaccine submissions & GOALS courses assigned. If you’re rotating on a unit that you have never rotated on before or haven’t rotated on in the past year, arrange time with the unit manager to orient to the unit before the first day of clinicals with students.

Getting started

All graduate nursing students (e.g., MSN, DNP, PhD) should reach out to our nursing student education team at nsg_affiliates@geisinger.edu for help setting up projects. These may include practicums, preceptorships, capstones or research projects. 

When you contact us, be sure to include: 

•  The name of your school
•  The learning experience you’d like to complete
•  Your desired start date 

Note: Onboarding can take six weeks or more. Inquiries made less than six weeks before the anticipated start date of the learning experience may not be able to be accommodated or may not start on time. Reach out to the team more than six weeks ahead of time so we can get everything set up.

Once we receive your inquiry, we’ll check whether we have an active USAA agreement with your school. If so, we will notify you to complete our Graduate Nursing Student Information Form.

When you submit the form, we’ll reach out to your school to get your implementation letter agreement signed. After it’s signed by your school and our associate dean, we can begin onboarding you. We’ll request accesses (e.g., Epic access) once you are in our system. 

If you are a student and employee of Geisinger:

•  Computer login: You will not receive a separate computer login for your student role. You’ll continue to login with your employee credentials to access the network.
•  Vaccine compliance: Employed students do not need to resubmit proof of vaccinations. During onboarding, your student and employee roles are merged under your employee role in Workday. All employees at Geisinger are required to be fully vaccinated and the compliance will automatically apply to your student role, so no further submissions are necessary.
•  Epic access/GOALS: If you require Epic access as a student, you will be issued a separate student Epic login which you’ll use while in your student role. At the time you’re sent your Epic login ID, you’ll also be sent the list of GOALS courses you need to complete. Log into your employee GOALS account, search for each course and complete it. All courses must be completed once per calendar year.

If you are a student only (not employed at Geisinger):

•  Computer login: Once you are onboarded, a login letter will be generated two weeks before the start date submitted into the onboarding portal or four weeks ahead of your first day of the learning experience. You’ll receive a login letter along with directions on how to submit proof of vaccination, complete GOALS courses and log into the network for the first time from a non-Geisinger computer. You won’t be able to login until the start date (two weeks ahead of day one of your learning experience).
•  Vaccine compliance: All students are required to be vaccine compliant before being granted access to our network and systems. Non-employed students must submit proof of vaccination(s) before the start date to be able to login and begin working on GOALS courses.
•  Epic access/GOALS: If you require Epic access as a student, you will use the universal login information from your login letter to access your student Epic account. GOALS courses for student nurses are automatically assigned and you must complete all courses assigned to you before the first day of your learning experience.