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Evaluating the Success of Your Training Program

Guest post by: Peter Polack

Article Overview: It's important to get your staff up to speed with EMR by offering training. This training is most effective when you evaluate the success of the program by testing your staff's new skills.

Evaluating the Success of Your Training Program

In order to implement an electronic medical records (EMR) system, you must have buy-in. This means you'll need firm commitments from the influencers at your medical practice, along with all organizational levels. Just as one single naysayer can drag down those around them, a managing partner may have to interject when discovering that a physician is preventing project implementation. It's also a good idea to tell your patients about the practice's upcoming move to electronic, as in this case they'll be more patient while the practice works through the little problems en route to the grand vision. The majority of project managers would cite the 'people factor' as the primary cause of project failure. Usually the causes are traceable to ineffective planning and training. A transition over to EMR can be a stressful situation for some people - this is particularly true if they're having to learn the system while caring for patients in a live work setting. It's usually a good idea to specify some staff as contacts, so the other employees have someone to go to with questions and problems they may be experiencing with the new system.

One way to determine if your staff is ready for electronic medical records (EMR) is to conduct audits of training. For example, one practice asked the office coordinator to conduct a training course which taught employees to use the upcoming EMR system. These training sessions were held each week. Everything seemed to be flowing well; however, when the launch day arrived it became obvious that some employees didn't have much skill using the new system.

It was unfortunate that the provided training didn't include an audit or evaluation of the effectiveness it had in training individuals. Sending employees to classes is a good idea in general, but this alone doesn't guarantee that they'll understand how to use the new EMR system afterward. Tests should be conducted, and grades issued based on performance. Also bear in mind that skills fade after long periods of inactivity.

Ideally there are ample opportunities for staff to develop and practice new skills during the workday. It can be a good idea to offer after-work tutorial classes as well. Remind your staff that successful implementation is a team effort, and you understand how hard everyone is working to reach this aim. Even so, make sure to audit the success of your training programs, to be quite sure that everyone is prepared to make the big switch to EMR.

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Article Tags: audits, electronic medical records, firm commitments, grand vision, influencers, launch day, medical practice, naysayer, office coordinator, project failure, project implementation, project managers, sessions, stressful situation, transition



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