Unika Skills Gym — User Guide

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Unika Skills Gym — Trainee Manual

Everything you need to practice, take an assigned evaluation, and read your feedback. Written for everyone at Unika Health — no technical background needed.


What is the Skills Gym

The Skills Gym is where you practice the conversations you have every day. You talk out loud with a simulated patient who actually talks back, and when you finish you get coaching on how it went.

There are two sides to it:

You reach both from the sidebar on the left: Home, Practice, Evaluation.


What's new

2026-08-20You stay signed in for the workday. Opening the portal in a new tab or later the same day no longer asks you to sign in again — one Google sign-in now lasts about 8 hours.

2026-08-06 — In Model Understanding questions, **Re-record now restarts the answer timer** — every take gets the full time instead of whatever the previous take left.

2026-08-05 — The round ? help button is now blue so it's easier to spot, and practice scenarios you've finished are marked in blue instead of grey.

2026-08-04 — This guide now opens right inside the portal: click the round ? button, then "Open the guide."

2026-08-04 — If you ever saw duplicate evaluations in your portal, that's fixed. You'll only ever see one.

2026-08-04 — The welcome tour now shows once, on your first visit — not on every sign-in. You can always reopen it with the round ? button.

2026-08-04 — An evaluation you've already submitted no longer shows an "Overdue" label while it waits for review. Once your status says In review, you're done.


Getting in

There are two ways in, and both land you in the same place.

  1. From the learning portal (easiest). Open the Skills Gym item in TalentLMS and click through. You're signed in automatically — no password to type.
  2. From a direct link. Your trainer may send you a link straight to the Skills Gym. Open it and click Sign in with Google, using your Unika Health work email.

The sign-in screen says "Skills Gym — Sign in with your work email to continue." Use your work email, not a personal one. A personal account will not find your assignments.

If the learning-portal launch doesn't work, you'll see a short message saying so. Just sign in with your work email instead — everything is still there.

First time in? A short welcome walkthrough opens on its own. The round ? button in the bottom-right corner brings it back any time — and the same menu opens this guide.


Practicing a scenario

Practice is unlimited. Nothing here goes to your trainer as a score.

  1. Click Practice in the sidebar.
  2. Pick a scenario from the list. Each one shows a Difficulty tag — medium, medium-high, or high. Start wherever you like; nothing is locked.
  3. Read the patient's background on the screen that opens. This is what you'd know before picking up the phone, so take a moment with it.
  4. Click to begin. The portal will check your microphone before it lets you start.
  5. Allow microphone access. Your browser will pop up a small box asking for permission. Click Allow. This is the single most common thing that trips people up — if you dismiss it or click Block, the patient will not be able to hear you.
  6. Talk naturally, the way you would on a real call. Don't script it. The patient responds to what you actually say.
  7. When the conversation is finished, end the session. Your work saves on its own — there is nothing to download or upload.
  8. Your coaching appears right away.

A few things worth knowing:


Taking an assigned evaluation

Assigned evaluations live under Evaluation in the sidebar. Anything due soon also appears on your Home screen so you don't have to go looking.

If nothing has been assigned yet, you'll see "No evaluation assigned at this time." That's normal — your trainer assigns them when they're ready for you.

Before you start

Each assignment card shows its name, its due date, and its current status. The due date appears as a small chip: Due 15 Aug, Due in 2 days, Due today, or Overdue in red.

Click Start to begin, or Resume if you already opened it once.

What happens inside

You'll first see a What to expect screen with a permission check. The Start button stays greyed out until everything it needs is working — this is on purpose, so you never lose an answer to a microphone that wasn't on.

Depending on the evaluation, you may be asked for:

Click Allow at each prompt. If you accidentally click Block, use the Retry button on the permission row rather than starting over.

Model Understanding evaluations

This type is a set of spoken questions, one at a time:

  1. A question appears, and a Reading time timer runs while you look it over. Nothing is recording yet.
  2. When you're ready, click Record answer and speak your answer out loud. The timer switches to your answer window.
  3. Click Stop when you're done. You'll see "Saving…" for a moment.
  4. If you want another go at that question, click Re-record. The answer timer restarts at the full time for the new take, and the label above shows Take 1 of 2 so you always know how many you have left.
  5. Click Next question to move on. You cannot go back to a question once you've moved past it, so finish each one before advancing.
  6. On the last question, click Finish. You'll be asked "Finish and submit your responses?" — click Finish again to confirm, or Not yet to go back.

Plan for one sitting. The timers run per question and your answers submit as one set, so start when you have a quiet stretch and won't be interrupted. If you do get pulled away, your saved answers keep — the card shows Resume and you continue from where you were — but remember you cannot revisit questions you've already moved past, and nothing is submitted until you click Finish.

After you submit

Your status changes, and that's your signal that you're done:

StatusWhat it means
AssignedSent to you, not opened yet.
In progressYou've started it but haven't submitted.
In reviewSubmitted. Your trainer is reviewing it. You're done — there is nothing else for you to do.
Result availableYour trainer has released your result. Click View result.
OverdueThe due date passed and you haven't submitted yet.

Overdue only ever means "not yet submitted." Once your status reads In review, you are not overdue and you don't need to chase anyone.

If your trainer allows retakes, you'll see a Retake button showing how many you've used, for example "Retake (1 of 2 used)".


Reading your results and coaching

Practice results appear the moment you finish. Open them any time by clicking a completed scenario under Practice.

Evaluation results appear only after your trainer reviews and releases them. When the status reads Result available, click View result on the card — on the Evaluation page or on Home.

What you'll see

Evaluations also show your score, the points you were expected to hit, and your trainer's notes — once released.

Don't read a single satisfaction chip as a verdict. The coaching underneath is the part that helps you next time.


Something's not working

The patient can't hear me / my microphone isn't detected

  1. Look at your browser's address bar for a small camera or lock icon. Click it.
  2. Find Microphone and set it to Allow.
  3. Reload the page and start again.
  4. Still stuck? Check that no other app (a video call, a softphone) has your microphone open — the portal will tell you if something else is using it.
  5. Try Chrome if you're on another browser. Chrome and Edge work best; Safari has limited support for screen recording.
  6. Restart your browser completely and try once more.

If you're on a clinic network and the call simply won't connect, try again from home or from your phone's hotspot. Some clinic networks block the kind of connection the voice conversation needs. This is not a problem with your computer.

My camera is required but broken

Contact IT to get the camera fixed. The recording requirement is set for the evaluation type as a whole and cannot be switched off for one person, so a working camera is the only way through.

The page looks odd or out of date after an update

Do a hard refresh:

That clears the old version out and loads the current one.

My answer says it didn't save

You'll see "Your answer didn't save. Retry to continue." Click Retry saving — this re-sends the same recording and does not use up one of your takes. Only use Re-record if retrying keeps failing.

Anything else

Post in the Unika Skills Gym Locker Room chat space. That's faster than sending a direct message, and everyone benefits from seeing the answer. You can also use the feedback button in the portal (below).


Sending feedback

There's a Feedback button in the bottom-right corner of every page. Two ways to use it:

You can tag your note as Typo, Confusing, Bug, or Suggestion. Tagging is optional.

Click send and you'll get a short "Sent — thanks!" confirmation. Your feedback goes straight to the team and it is private — other trainees never see it.

The feedback button is hidden while you're mid-session so nothing distracts you during a conversation. If you spot something during a session, note it and send it afterwards.

The team reads every item. Small, specific reports are the most useful kind — a sentence that read wrong is worth sending.