The workforce training program for healthcare professionals on health IT may just be getting off the ground at many community colleges, but at least one group of nurses in rural Maine who were interviewed for a local story are finding value - and a community - in the course.
One of the nurses participating in the online program said she was unfamiliar with computer terminology until she began the course. She is a veteran nurse with more than 20 years of practice under her belt. What's noteworthy about her is that her hospital employer asked her to help evaluate its record-keeping processes and figure out how to make the transition to a paperless environment.
I am assuming she is a part of a larger evaluation team or committee. I don't know how common this practice is, but I applaud the hospital for doing a great job of planning before even thinking about selecting a vendor. The very first step, however, after making the decision to go paperless is to bring together a good group of stakeholders to assess current and future workflow and record-keeping practices.
What constitutes a good group? The tech-savvy clinician is an obvious choice. He or she will take on the role of physician champion. You need to include a representative from all departments that would touch the EMR, such as billing, registration, and so on. In other words, don't forget to include non-clinicians, especially the business users.
Are there any anti-physician champions in the facility? You need to engage them as well. This is not a case of keeping your enemies even closer or trying to change their minds. Exclusivity should be avoided at all costs to eliminate any subterfuge or sabotage efforts. Their arguments need to be taken into consideration, but they should not derail the overall goal. If you couch the whole initiative as one of patient safety and improved quality of care, then the central issue becomes how does your healthcare organization achieve it through health IT and EMR in particular.
Sending your staff through the workforce training program is a good move. It's subsidized and it's serving a specific purpose. And as the nurses in the article attest, it brings together a group of people who are in the same boat and can find support during this transition.
Photo by qnr courtesy of Creative Commons license.
