The Pima County 'Plant Clinic' gets a Reboot
How the Pima County Master Gardener program is reaching new heights & bringing customer service, data management and program evaluation together, online.
Dominic Rodriguez, Parker Filer, Anne Hunt.Abstract
The "Plant Clinic" is one of the most impactful and community oriented, outreach activities offered by the Pima County Master Gardener program. For several years our client intake procedure for responding to the public's many, daily plant health inquiries involved a blue, paper form which our volunteers used to capture details pertaining to the inquiry and contact information for the client. In March 2019, we initiated a project to convert our paper only case management process, to an online, intake form connected to a cloud-based database. The goals of this project were to 1) improve data collection and management, 2) create a searchable database to easily access, retrieve and analyze cases, 3) enhance the quality and consistency of communications with clients and 4) provide increased opportunities for Master Gardener program volunteers' continuing education and training. The project has far surpassed each of these goals and continues to inspire new, creative and impactful uses, especially during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
Introduction: Binders vs Bytes
Every year, thousands of Pima county residents and Arizonans contact our Master Gardener volunteers for assistance and recommendations regarding their home landscapes, gardens, houseplants- and the pests and diseases, irrigation, fertilizer and climatic challenges they encounter. Clients reach our "Plant Clinic" primarily through walk-in consultation, phone calls and email. In 2019 the Plant Clinic served 4,213 individuals through
2,060 phone calls; 424 emails, and 1,729 walk-ins
While the number of clients this activity supports is impressive, the data that we collect has been captured only on paper forms which were then stored in three-ring binders and filed by date. The binders sat on a shelf in our office and the rich data those paper intake forms contained sat to gather dust, not easily accessible or searchable. A veritable treasure trove of data relating to plant health across our community and throughout the years, lost to the analog.
Methods: The Opportunity
In April 2019, program staff began working with Dominic Rodriguez and the operations team to develop an online database specifically for the purpose of migrating our Plant Clinic client service and data collection online. The project, referred to affectionately but unofficially as "Blue Sheets" (in honor of the former, paper intake forms), was deployed for limited, internal testing. In August 2019, two Master Gardeners served as early champions of the system and contributed significant feedback - and hours of meetings and self-paced training on the system- to help refine and improve it to meet the plant Clinic's needs.
Between October and December 2019, the software was continually refined and the MG volunteers began training other Plant Clinic volunteers. Since January 2020, the system has been live and MG volunteers have created over 1,700 tickets within the system- each representing a unique inquiry. The "tickets" generated in the Blue Sheets online system represents a unique case from a stakeholder in the community, and can now be easily tracked, archived and accessed for future reference and evaluation. In addition, volunteers can follow-up with community members and build stronger relationships in the county while promoting and recruiting additional Master Gardeners.
Outcomes: The Tickets Talk
In addition to developing and deploying the Blue Sheets system itself, we have also created an online participant feedback survey to help us evaluate the Plant Clinic activity, and to better serve our clients. The Slideshow to the right shares some of our preliminary results (n=93) as of 9/27/2020.
While the feedback from stakeholders and volunteers has been overwhelmingly positive, we are also finding multiple innovative new uses for the Blue Sheets system. During the past 7 months of remote work we have been able to pivot nearly seamlessly and continue providing this outreach service. Thanks to the dedication and ingenuity of our Master Gardeners, we have also developed a range of creative training opportunities for newly-minted MG and long-serving volunteers alike. Using real client tickets as "cold cases," our program is investing in our MGs' skills as diagnosticians and science communicators through original training sessions such as "Ticket Talk Tuesday" Zoom sessions, Photo IDs, Role Playing, and much more.
Blue Sheets also enables us to create a wide range of "reports" which give us important new insights by filtering our tickets (cases) by date, topic, inquiry type and more.
Conclusion: Next Steps
Adapting our popular and effective Plant Clinic activity to an online platform for case management has been a transformative and overwhelmingly positive development for the Pima County Master Gardener program. Gone are the linear feet of shelf space formerly occupied by binders of paper intake forms, and along with them the difficulties that range from deciphering another volunteer's handwriting to tracking a case's physical progress through the office. The innovative and custom solutions afforded by the "Blue Sheets" platform in QuickBase have been numerous, and are improving nearly every aspect of the Plant Clinic activity including: training, communication, quality assurance, evaluation and continuing education.
While the software confers numerous efficiencies, the strength and success of this transformation has been due in large part to our volunteers; Master Gardeners who recognized the need, the opportunity and care enough to work with our programs' staff and their fellow volunteers to help develop the platform as well as the human protocols and practices to operate it effectively.
In the future, we envision Blue Sheets will continue allowing us to remain active and supporting the community throughout Covid-19. As we generate more cases and expand our database, this new treasure trove of plant health information can begin to be queried through new reports and yield numerous insights into horticultural phenology across Pima County. As we continue building and flexing this new muscle, we will also improve project evaluation, impacts and enable us to compare annual occurrences of plant pest and disease events. With the support of the new "Blue Sheets," we will better support a Green community.
Visit the Pima County Master Gardener program and submit your plant questions, and try "Blue Sheets" for yourself. Tell a friend! Click this blue button! ---->
Anne Hunt
Pima County Master Gardener
Chair, Plant Clinic