High-Performing EHR Training Teams: Coaching for Success

I spent a great deal of time throughout the 2019 holidays watching NCAA football conference championship games, bowl games, and playoff games leading to the national championship game. I began thinking about and trying to analyze what makes these football teams successful. I started comparing football scenarios to EHR training teams I have encountered on different Epic training projects over the years. I have been contracted as a training program manager on several Epic training projects, and my experience has been that by the time I arrive on a project, the training project has often gone terribly awry. Usually, I am the second, third, or fourth program manager to manage the project, tasked to get the project on track. On nearly every project, I have encountered EHR training teams who were frustrated and angry, feeling betrayed as a result of previous leadership and/or how they were placed in the Principal Trainer role.

In many cases, the Principal Trainers had developed no peer relationships nor respect for one another’s contributions to the project. Fortunately, with hard work and long hours, the teams were able to get these projects on the right track. To do this, it was necessary to develop a higher-performing EHR training team. The Principal Trainers are the core of a training project’s success!

So, where does one start in trying to build a higher-performing team? I learned early in my consulting career that the skills I learned as a nurse applies to scenarios beyond patient care. Apply the nursing process to team development.

• Assessment: Complete an assessment, identifying objective and subjective data related to the team’s current level of performance.
• Diagnosis: Analyze the data. Analyze the information to determine the team’s challenges, strengths, and weaknesses.
• Outcome and Planning: What are the desired results for the project and the team? Identify the team’s values. Once the desired outcomes are identified, it is necessary to set goals for the team members that are consistent with their values, individually and collectively, and develop a plan for moving toward the desired outcomes.
• Implementation: Put the plan into action. Empowering the team members requires the leader to let go of controlling behaviors. Develop relationships by facilitating communication and focusing on respect, listening, and managing conflict. Create an atmosphere of flexibility, embracing obstacles and mistakes as opportunities for improvement. Recognize and appreciate one another. Team members need to respect the contributions of each member and view individual strengths as complements to another’s weaknesses. Collectively a team can solve more complex problems. It is not a competition between team members. Have fun while committing to success. As a leader, be consistent in your message to promote trust within the team.
• Evaluation: It is imperative to evaluate progress toward the desired outcomes regularly and frequently. This requires requesting feedback from team members and accepting feedback regardless of how negative it might be. Negative feedback is another opportunity to improve, making progress toward the development of a higher-performing team. One school of thought is that team members need to like one another. Not so. Team members need to respect one another and respect the contributions of each individual.

Let’s return to football. When I research the characteristics of winning teams, the results consistently reflect these characteristics: vision, engagement, collaboration, diversity, respect, common goal, mutual respect and trust, effective leadership, and preparation. These characteristics are not just limited to football teams. These characteristics apply to ALL teams. The responsibility of a leader is to create an environment that promotes a higher level of performance to build a successful EHR training team and achieve desired outcomes.

Phyllis Siverhus is a member of Optimum Healthcare IT’s Training and Activation team. If you are interested in learning more about the training and activation services that Optimum offers, click here.