Clinician Training

Why Provide EHR Training?

Clinicians are hungry for more information about the EHR. They want to be able to master it to make their lives easier and their patients’ lives safer. One of the earliest findings of the Arch Collaborative was that initial training makes a significant impact on clinicians’ EHR satisfaction. There is a 90-point difference in Net EHR Experience Score between clinicians who strongly agree their initial EHR training prepared them well and those who strongly disagree.

Who Should Be Involved in Training?

There are many options for who can effectively lead initial and ongoing training, but there is no single right answer for who can do it best. The key is rather to focus on the quality of trainers and where they can most effectively train.

How Much Training Is Needed?

Feedback from EHR users suggests that 5–8 total hours of initial training and 3–5 hours of ongoing training per year sets clinicians up for success. It is important to remember that training shouldn’t be so time-consuming that it contributes to clinician burnout. Instead, organizations should plan and communicate about training sessions ahead of time—this improves both attendance and overall clinician engagement in training.

What Methods of Training Are Most Effective?

Organizations can use a variety of types of training and classes for onboarding training or ongoing education to educate clinicians on the EHR. Having a rich mix of content-delivery methods appears to be most impactful on clinician’s overall EHR satisfaction. Some training practices are shown to be more helpful—for example, in-person training, rounding, and training on personalization tools and specialty-specific workflows.

Where Should Training Be Held?

Finding the most effective location to host training sessions can be difficult. Collaborative data shows that while some locations have been shown to support strong training, the location of training is less impactful than the quality of training. There has been evidence from a handful of organizations that holding trainings off-site can be highly effective, though this method can be more difficult to carry out.