The looming healthcare worker shortage crisis is upon us and no organization is too large to not feel the effects. In bearing the heavy emotional and physical burden of the pandemic and its aftershocks, strained medical professionals are fed up. The U.S. could face a shortage of 37,800 to 124,000 physicians by 2034, according to data released from the Association of American Medical Colleges. According to a McKinsey report, the United States could see a deficit of 200,000 to 450,000 registered nurses available for direct patient care by 2025. The numbers are daunting, which means it’s now even more important to prioritize onboarding and retention efforts. This starts with improving the employee experience through personalization.
Doctors with high electronic health record (EHR) satisfaction are nearly five times more likely to report they’ll stay at their organization. In a time of labor shortages and widespread burnout, organizations cannot afford to overlook how their EHR training delivers in terms of efficacy and quality of learning experience.
Learning to operate an EHR system is complex in its own right: they manage patient history and care, clinician activity, and billing cycle, as well as host massive quantities of patient data. On top of that, navigating EHR training comes with another set of potential complications. For starters, learners have varying knowledge bases and starting points — some may be first-timers, others may be veterans, and there are a variety of specialties to consider. People also carry their own feelings of frustration, especially when learning yet another EHR customization. How do organizations manage all these variables in order to provide effective training with a positive experience and ultimately boost retention and satisfaction? That requires an understanding of the valuable data and feedback collected by a KLAS Arch Collaborative report. (Hint: many signs point to personalization, down to the training level).
The biggest EHR training-related takeaways
The September 2022 report conveys that common EHR user — in this case, providers — frustrations include EHR functionality, ability to deliver quality care, and vendor delivery of quality.
The report also finds that satisfaction scores vary by specialty, with hospital medicine providers scoring over 10 points higher than the average. So, what did they like about it? The report indicates they are satisfied with their workflow training, EHR functionality, and ease of learning how to use the system. This feedback reveals that in addition to functionality, training and education are key influences on overall satisfaction provider satisfaction.
KLAS also interviewed respondents with exceptionally high satisfaction scores to investigate what drove this unique success. One of the best practices that emerged from the investigation is “Implement EHR education, including required organization trainings and self-learning opportunities, to increase EHR knowledge and understanding.”
Researchers concluded, “Though it may take significant time and effort to build specialty-specific workflow training, providers who strongly agree their training was specialty-specific are almost 25 times more likely to agree that the EHR has the functionality they need. Both organizations and EHR vendors can help all providers find success with the EHR by ensuring that initial and ongoing education are tailored to the needs of different specialties.”
In other words, personalized training not only matters, but it is the key differentiator in provider EHR satisfaction scores, and has far-reaching, organization-wide implications. The question is, how do health systems deliver individually personalized training at scale, in blended and virtual settings? Amplifire has helped large organizations do just that with exceptional results, confirming that personalizing the learning experience not only yields higher learner satisfaction scores, but also generates powerful ROI.
Personalized learning experiences lead to more effective EHR training
The learning experience is personalized in a number of ways with Amplifire. Firstly, Amplifire is an adaptive platform that adjusts to individual learners’ knowledge levels. It tailors the experience to learners’ needs, filling in knowledge gaps, shoring up uncertainties, and correcting misconceptions. By adapting to their knowledge level, trainees don’t waste time relearning things they already know. Instead, they spend more time only on subjects they demonstrate struggle with.
The Amplifire platform is built with cognitive triggers and cutting-edge brain science discoveries from our Science Advisory Board (SAB) — some of the world’s leading experts in neuroscience and cognitive science. These triggers work with the way the mind naturally learns, so learners can spend less time training and retain more than traditional methods. Not only does this approach make learning more effective, it is a better experience for the learner. Triggers including gamification, priming, feedback, metacognition and more keep learners engaged, improving the learning experience.
Another factor in creating a successful learning experience is collecting data to inform any further enhancements your organization should choose to offer. In a blended setting, Amplifire’s data analytics offer insights that were previously invisible. Instructors can see which topics have landed and which topics learners have struggled with, and where further instruction is needed. They can then filter topics with a high struggle rate to inform their instruction. Instructors can identify individuals who are struggling with what questions or topics to provide at-the-elbow coaching. This level of personalization ensures struggling learners get the help they need and the best learning experience possible.
In action, this level of personalization has powerful effects for both trainees and health systems at large. One such example is how UCHealth cut training time by 87.5%, achieved an 86% learner satisfaction score, and experienced $1.45 million in savings using Amplifire training. Where learners typically spent eight hours in the classroom with their previous training system, learners now spend an hour or less on average in training. This not only respects their time, but also increases their time out on the floor, helping patients. 81% of learners said the course covered EHR skills relevant to their role, while 82% said that Amplifire’s unique question and answer format helped them learn strong EHR skills.
Furthermore, based on the built-in proficiency analysis tool within the EHR system, employees achieved 19% higher proficiency — showing that the training not only delivered on these fronts, but that it is also more effective. Research into this data is ongoing, but Harvard University neuroscientist Dan Schacter believes this result is because Amplifire gives clinicians a more robust mental schema with which to integrate their ongoing experiences in the EHR. Over time, the Amplifire-based schema compounds into EHR proficiency that grows at a faster rate than proficiency based on mental schemas originating in the classroom.
For the 19 providers — identified using Amplfiire’s learner analytics — who struggled to learn on multiple topics, Amplifire generated individual action plans. Administrators and educators used these plans for at-the-elbow consultation. Apart from the functionality of the learning platform itself, Amplifire also gives organizations the to support individualized coaching — the level of personalization the Arch Collaborative report reveal could make or break employee satisfaction.
From the beginning, Amplifire has relied on innovative brain science to guide its product development to create the most effective learning and training solution, perfectly tailored to the way the human brain works. Learn more about how Amplifire helps people learn better and faster by checking out a demo.
