Will Your EMR Go-Live Education Miss The Mark?

LinkedIn conversations can be quite the font of wisdom, and today was no exception. In comments on a post discussing how training can lead to buy-in, David Kelley, D.O. made it clear that such training often leaves participants cold:

[Have] been the recipient in a couple of Go Lives and been on a few Go Live support teams. The younger/tech-savvy people verbalize the pre-Go Live to have been not worth their time as it was targeted for below their knowledge base. In stark contrast, the more senior/less tech-savvy verbalize near-hatred of those pre-Go Live educational courses as they were so far above their heads as to equate to tech-gibberish.

By reposting these remarks, I’m by no means suggesting that go-live training is a waste of time. Nor am I suggesting that every time hospitals attempt to prepare staffers for EMR implementation, they bore the heck out of staffers while accomplishing nothing. But if Kelley’s experience is any guide, many such trainings are doing a lousy job of connecting with their audience.

His complaints also raise several questions for me, including the following:

  • Who was teaching the courses? Was it vendor reps? If so, it’s little wonder that they produced content only a developer could love.
  • What was the focus of the courses? From Kelley’s comments, it sounds like clinicians and staff typically got a general overview which didn’t do much to foster success.
  • Did the training offer hands-on instruction? And I don’t mean a quick look at basic functions, but rather specific guidance on how to perform key job functions.
  • Did instructors explain the advantages of the new systems? To get buy-in from clinicians and staff, instructors need to hammer home how the new technologies save time, improve efficiency and better patient care.

Regardless, what I gather from Kelley’s story is that too often, hospitals often talk at future EMR users rather than helping them get productive and oriented. It would appear that those responsible for go-lives often fail to consider how the implementation impacts specific functions, and talk around the issues rather than blending training with problem-solving.

I’ve actually seen the effects of what seems to have been a questionable go-live training strategy here in metro DC. Now, the hospital talked a good change management game — even loading screen savers onto all computers stating that “[vendor] is coming!” and posting signs letting patients know about the upcoming shift — for months prior to the system kickoff.

But what do you suppose happened when I spent a few days as an inpatient later that year? I saw nurses and doctors desperately trying to make the system behave by sharing workarounds with each other. Now, you tell me: Would clinical staffers be going to these lengths if they’d had thorough, pitch-perfect, hands-on training?

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

Categories