Technology plays a major role in the healthcare industry. Having highly skilled staff and critical medication around is no longer enough. Technology allows work in the clinic to be more efficient, saving both the staff’s and patients’ time and effort.
However, technology can be overwhelming and lead to wrong conclusions if your medical staff can’t use it properly. It’s important to invest time into preparing your staff beforehand. There are many ways you can introduce technologies like Crisis Response Software into your clinic and train your medical staff on how to use it properly to garner the best results.
Start Slow
Technological advancements, especially ones that are entirely new and don’t rely on the previous tech, can be overwhelming for the majority of your medical staff. Not to mention, the negative side effects could be even worse if you introduce multiple hard-to-use technologies into your clinic at the same time. Your best option to ensure your staff has adequate time to get used to new tech while remaining budget-friendly is by gradually introducing new tech to your clinic.
You also need to keep an open communication channel between you and your staff. That way, they can ask for help if they find a particular piece of equipment hard to use or need outside resources to train and learn more. Another option is to communicate with the company that provided you with the technology and ask them to train your staff.
Find Tutorials
Tutorials are essential regardless of your budget. Training is necessary for every staff member, and you’d have to repeat it for every individual that joins your clinic in the future. But tutorials, whether they’re videos or printed materials, can be shared multiple times and easily updated to suit your clinic’s ever-changing needs and standards.
Your best option is to ask your service provider for tutorials directly. Whether it’s software or a piece of equipment, the manufacturer most likely has technical documentation and user guide books they can provide you with. Whatever option you settle on, make sure it suits your staff. Ensure your staff members can understand the tutorials and have a grip on how the new technology works.
EMR Conversions
While countless medical software can help with a diagnosis, they’re all additions to an already-functioning clinic. However, EMR (electronic medical records) and MBI (medical beneficiary identifier) in conjunction with medicare mbi converter software is essential to the modern clinic and should be one of the first technologies you introduce to your clinic staff. As the name suggests, EMR turns medical records and documents into digital files instead of paper files. This makes it significantly easier for staff members to pull outpatient records without going through thousands of documents, which is particularly useful in medical emergencies.
EMR software is also a safe way to store patients’ records and transfer them without worrying about theft or damage from incidents or natural disasters. Similar to other tech, EMR software needs training to be used to the fullest. Staff members should prepare for an EMR conversion before you officially implement the software into the clinic. This gives them time to get familiar with the software before it’s directly related to the clinic’s performance.
Assess
Even staff members themselves won’t know whether they have a tight grip on a piece of technology or software without having their skills put to the test. You can check this by regularly assessing your team members on their newly acquired knowledge and skills. This can be anything from old-school written or oral exams for technical information and protocols to requiring them to perform a certain task on the machine or software and seeing how they fare.
Not only does this ensure your staff knows what they’re doing, but it also puts everyone on the same page and allows you to single out individuals who may need extra training. You can then focus your education and training resources on them instead of all of your employees. Careful assessments also allow you to offer constructive feedback and figure out how you can improve your staff’s skills and meet their needs.
Stay Patient During Technology Changes
It’s important to train all your staff members on how to use the equipment and stay patient. Not all employees have the ability to become tech-savvy quickly. Take extra time with them on the basics while leaving complex tasks to a handful of staff members who received extensive technical training.