Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 4/28/25

Even though I’m a contributor, I rely on HIStalk as much as the next healthcare IT person to keep me up to date on what’s going on in the industry. It’s challenging to sort through all the noise out there and the number of podcasts, newsletters, and emails that are trying to get the attention of leaders in our industry. The newsy tidbits are great for conversation openers when talking to my peers. I would much rather ask someone what they think about an industry happening rather than making small talk about someone’s boat or what they did over the weekend.

This week’s tidbit was the item that Mr. H picked up about virtual EHR education and how it has moved from being an uncommon training tactic to being one on which organizations now depend.

I remember my first experiences with virtual training, which were VHS recordings of my organization’s HIPAA training. It included a Roaring 20s gangster theme and questionable production values. From there, things evolved to recorded voiceovers with multiple choice questions that required clicking through to get to the next part of training. By the time I left my first EHR leadership role, we were starting to get modularized training that lived within a learning management system. Users could move through courses with some level of choice rather than having to follow a rigidly prescribed path.

Modern EHR training and education strategies are much more capable of meeting users where they are, rather than assuming that everyone needs the same type or level of training. There’s a difference between training a newly-hired physician who has never embraced computers and merely tolerates them versus training someone who is straight out of residency and who has used computers since they were toddlers. A recent KLAS Arch Collaborative survey shows that almost 70% of clinicians surveyed found it helpful that self-directed learning can be done at the time of their choosing. Most of the organizations that I work with use a blended training approach that includes asynchronous learning, interactive online learning, and in-person learning for those who want or need it.

The last organization where I worked as an in-person physician employed this approach, though it was less than ideal. The initial asynchronous content represented out-of-the-box functionality from the EHR vendor. When I reached the second phase, I realized that the organization had heavily customized its system. In fact, they had customized it in a bad way, taking away the ability for users to personalize their workflows and forcing everyone into the same cookie cutter approach.

There were some online sessions that covered the organization’s customized content, but I didn’t feel that the trainer was terribly capable. Some of the ways that she presented the material created confusion. We had five people in my training cohort, ranging from medical assistants to physicians, and some were directly out of their school-based training with minimal clinical experience in the field.

That probably wasn’t the trainer’s fault, but rather the organization’s shortsightedness at realizing the value of separate role-based training as well as integrated training. Still, she didn’t do much to try to pull it all together so that half of the class didn’t feel like their time was being wasted at any given time.

Personally, I like being able to go back to training that I’ve done in the past when I need a refresher. It’s similar to the concept of circle-back training at 30, 60, and 90 days post-implementation, but it allows people to do so at their own pace. When you’re seeing 40 patients a day, workflows get baked in pretty quickly. You often wind up so focused on getting through them that you don’t have time to appreciate the bells and whistles that might be in your EHR that you aren’t using.

Being able to go back to the training syllabus might be enough to remind you that maybe you should customize or personalize a particular part of a workflow. Or, you could revisit the content for the details if you couldn’t figure out how to do it in a less-than-intuitive EHR.

Embracing virtual training also means that organizations are showing that they value the learning experience of newer members of the workforce. Most of the high school students I know have been using online learning since their early grade school days, so the idea of old-fashioned classroom training may not resonate with them at all.

Many of this decade’s medical graduates were plunged into virtual learning due to the pandemic and had a front row seat to its quick evolution. The medical students who I talk to often don’t attend lectures, but consume the content by watching recordings at high speed and supplementing the school-provided lectures with online flashcards, videos, and tutorials. They’re not going to be excited to sit in a computer lab and be forced to try to learn at a pace that doesn’t match what they’re used to.

I’ve trained on most of the major EHRs at one point or another in my career. The biggest advantage that I see for recorded or asynchronous virtual training is the standardization factor. Variation between trainers doesn’t exist because everyone is presented the same material in the same way.

I’ve had some pretty bad trainers along the way, as well as a handful of truly outstanding ones. I have felt acutely how someone’s methodology or comments or anecdotal stories can have a negative impact on users’ ability to learn. I worked with one trainer who had some unique personal mannerisms and it made me wonder if his supervisor had ever watched him in the virtual classroom. It was clear by the facial expressions of others in my Zoom window that they weren’t a fan of his teaching style either.

Despite the effectiveness of virtual teaching and learning, it’s important for people to be able to access not only in-person support session,s but one-on-one support sessions if needed. Some learners are reluctant to ask questions in front of others for a variety of reasons, such as not feeling like they are looking bad to their peers or to subordinates. Others just need that individual touch to feel like they have reached the point where they can be confident using the system. That’s a corner that shouldn’t be cut, although the costs can be reduced by employing effective virtual learning strategies upstream.

What do you think about the evolution of virtual learning? How is your organization using it? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.