A big part of the success of an Electronic Health Record system relies on successful user adoption and utilisation. But the typical onboarding and education strategies employed by healthcare organisations procuring these systems do not go far enough to create a clinical workforce feeling confident and proficient in their use.

After spending vast amounts of money and going through months of disruption, these hospitals, unfortunately, often experience results that are sub-optimal.

Overworked clinicians are expected to master the user interface and new workflows of an EHR system following their completion of onboarding, which includes a mix of classroom training and eLearning courses. But studies show that after the initial training, retention drops up to 70% within just 24 hours.

Until recently, alternatives to the costly option of holding additional classroom training –taking clinicians away from their work with patients to again sit in a classroom – were scarce.

“Training methods haven’t really changed since the dawn of time, apart from the fact that we now have computer screens,” explains Johnathan Pascall, sales director for EMEA at ANCILE.

“In other words, it’s getting people into a room and then imparting knowledge on them, and it is part of the course, but people can get distracted. There isn’t much that can be done about that, it’s a very steep learning curve. Sometimes, the larger clinical system vendors have lots of training videos and e-learning syllabus, but the trouble with those things is that they take quite an investment in time, and it might not be specifically what you are looking for.

“It might be a 10-minute video, but you only need 30 seconds of that video, and you have to sit and watch the whole thing, which, when you are in the middle of your task, with a patient, you’re short of time, you’ve not in the best mindset to sit there and listen to 10 minutes or nine and a half minutes of irrelevant information.”

uPerform for Healthcare by ANCILE

However, solutions such as uPerform for Healthcare by ANCILE are utilising technology to empower clinicians to learn, and master, their ever-evolving EHR whilst they work.

uPerform for Healthcare enables a hospital’s training team, and Subject Matter Experts, to quickly and easily create a range of learning materials, including quick reference guides, interactive simulations, videos, and eLearning courses, for their own customised implementation - and have them accessible from within the system itself, targeted at specific roles. Users quickly learn the system, save time searching for help when they need it, and become proficient faster with less dependence on support staff and less time spent in instructor-led training. 

“Our system makes it very, very easy and quick for staff to record specific training content, which is specific to their version, whichever EHR it is, because they’re obviously all very configurable, and of this training can then be embedded into the software system in question,” Pascall adds.

Next week, the sales director will be speaking at the Healthcare Excellence Through Technology (HETT) show on 1 October from 14:55 – 15:15 at the HIMSS Theatre. His talk will focus on using ongoing education to drive proficiency and acceptance of the EHR.

You can find out more about ANCILE here.