My first experience in healthcare professionally was as a volunteer at Virginia Mason during their rollout for Computerized Provider Order Entry throughout the hospital where I was trained as a super user. Until this course I had not really gone back and thought critically about my experience now that I am much more familiar about healthcare in general and EHR systems. Every training session began with a video of the CMO explaining why it was necessary for them to enter orders electronically. At the time I didn’t really think anything of it but now I know that this was a vital step before any training session. Consistently over the last year and a half when something IT related fails it is because of the people rather than the technology. Securing the support by demonstrating to providers that someone they trust is on board with the system is absolutely essential.
In hindsight I also am shocked that I was allowed to do as much as a volunteer in this circumstance as I was. I essentially served as live in-person tech support for providers who were trying to figure out how to put an order into the system. While I was confident in my ability, I also had no experience using the EHR beyond the couple weeks of training I received. If I made a mistake and told them to use one type of order when it was actually another I don’t think myself or the provider would have known a mistake had been made. If the order were critical to coming up with a diagnosis or deciding upon a treatment plan it represented a serious patient safety concern. On the other hand, I understand VM’s thinking. Upgrading to the expanded EHR was an incredible capital investment and from previous research I know that the hours spent on training staff adds up to several hundred thousand more. While I’m sure there were discussions about patient safety concerns having volunteers be trained as super users I also understand that it was significantly cheaper than training 5-10 full-time employees to do the same role.
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