Clinical Partnership Coordinator

About the Work Unit:

The Clinical Placement Office works collaboratively with faculty, program directors, and students to ensure all students have a productive clinical experience. The Office is responsible for coordinating clinical placements across VUSN academic programs and ensuring all appropriate agreements are in place and all agency requirements are met for student rotations. This includes working with clinical partners across Middle Tennessee, throughout the United States, and occasionally internally.

Key Functions and Expected Performance:

Clinical Partnership Development and Relationship Management

• Develop and maintain strong relationships with healthcare organizations, clinical leaders, clinicians, preceptors, alumni, and other external partners.
• Conduct proactive outreach to prospective clinical partners and preceptors through telephone, email, professional networking, alumni engagement, events, and other relationship-development strategies.
• Serve as an accessible, responsive, and professional point of contact for VUSN clinical partners and preceptors.
• Maintain regular communication with existing partners to strengthen relationships and support long-term retention.
• Identify opportunities to expand existing partnerships and develop new relationships that increase clinical education capacity.
• Develop strategies to re-engage inactivate or underutilized clinical partners and preceptors.
• Collaborate with Clinical Affairs staff and faculty to identify specialties, geographic areas, and clinical experiences where additional partnership development is needed.
• Identify partner concerns and coordinate with appropriate VUSN personnel to facilitate timely resolution and a positive partner experience.

• Represent VUSN professionally at partner meetings, site visits, community events, professional gatherings, and other external engagement activities.

CRM and Partnership Management

• Maintain a comprehensive CRM database as the central source of information regarding VUSN clinical partnerships and preceptor relationships.
• Maintain accurate records of organizations, contacts, decision-makers, communications, relationship history, opportunities, commitments, and follow-up activities.
• Develop and maintain pipelines for prospective clinical partners and preceptors from initial identification through activate partnership.
• Establish consistent processes for documenting outreach, scheduling follow-up and tracking relationship activity.
• Use CRM data to identify inactivate relationships, prospective partners, geographic or specialty gaps, and opportunities for network growth.
• Develop and maintain dashboards and reports measuring outreach, partnership development, engagement, retention, and network growth.
• Promote consistent CRM use and sound data-management practices throughout Clinical Affairs.
• Identify opportunities to use technology, automation, and data to improve partnership development, outreach, and relationship management.

Clinical Partnership Budget and Payment Management

• Manage and monitor the departmental budget associated with clinical partnerships, preceptors, and related engagement activities.
• Develop, document, and maintain standardized processes for payments to clinical partners and preceptors.
• Coordinate timely and accurate payment processing with appropriate university financial and administrative offices.
• Maintain accurate records of financial commitments, invoices, completed payments, outstanding obligations, and anticipated expenditures.
• Reconcile partnership expenditures against established budgets and provide routine financial reporting to Clinical Affairs leadership.
• Support forecasting of future clinical partnership expenditures and annual budget planning.
• Identify opportunities to simplify payment workflows, reduce administrative delays, and improve the payment experience for clinical partners.

• Maintain appropriate financial documentation and internal controls for support accountability and audit readiness.

Partner Engagement, Marketing and Retention

• Develop and implement strategies to recruit, engage, recognize, and retain clinical partners and preceptors.
• Coordinate preceptor recognition, appreciation, and engagement initiatives.
• Develop targeted communications and outreach campaigns for current and prospective partners.
• Collaborate with appropriate VUSN and Vanderbilt partners on marketing, communications, alumni engagement, and external outreach.
• Effectively communicate the value of partnering with VUSN to prospective clinical partners and preceptors.
• Gather structured feedback from partners and use finding to identify opportunities to improve the partnership experience.
• Help create a consistent, professional, and recognizable VUSN presence within the clinical community.
• Approach clinical partnerships through a customer-service lens, continually identifying ways to make partnering with VUSN easier, more responsive, and more valuable.

Supervisory Relationships

This position does not have supervisory responsibility. This position reports administratively and functionally to the Director of Clinical Affairs Operations.

Education and Certifications

• Bachelor's degree from an accredited institution or relevant job experience is required.
• Masters or MBA preferred.
• Degree in business, marketing, healthcare administration, communications, public relations, or a related business-focused discipline strongly preferred.

Experience and Skills

• Two to four years of relevant professional, internship or co-op experience in business development, sales, marketing, account/relationship management, healthcare administration recruiting or related area preferred.
• Practical experience with Salesforce, Slate, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or a comparable CRM, including managing contracts, interactions, opportunities, follow-up, and data; strong proficiency with business technology and productivity tools.
• Excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills; strong organization, attention to detail, initiative, follow-through, adaptability, and ability to manage competing priorities independently.
• Must reside in or relocate to greater Nashville and maintain approximately 30% on-campus presence, with additional local meetings, site visits, networking, and partner engagement as needed.

Key Competencies

• Relationship Development: Enjoys meeting people, initiating conversations, developing rapport, and building lasting professional relationships.
• Initiative: Actively identifies and pursues opportunities rather than waiting for direction.
• CRM Disciple: Understands the value of CRM systems and consistently documents contacts, interactions, commitments, opportunities, and next steps.
• Business Mindset: Understands customer experience, value propositions, relationship pipelines, follow-up, and measurable results.
• Technology Orientation: Comfortable learning and using technology, data, automation, and emerging tools to improve work.
• Persistence: Comfortable initiating outreach, following up consistently, navigating rejection, and continuing to pursue opportunities.
• Organization and Follow-Through: Reliably tracks commitments, manages deadlines, maintains accurate records, and closes loops.
• Communication and Marketing: Able to tailor messages to different audiences and communicate a compelling reason to partner with VUSN.
• Professional Presence: Able to represent Vanderbilt effectively with clinicians, healthcare leaders, alumni, and community partners.
• Growth Orientation: Demonstrates curiosity, adaptability, and a desire to develop new skills and assume increasing responsibility.