University Hospitals’ IT Training Community: Leveraging Innovation to Scale Employee Training During a Pandemic

November, 2020

𝑽𝒂𝒍𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒊𝒂 𝑺𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝒊𝒔 𝑴𝒂𝒏𝒂𝒈𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆 𝑴𝒂𝒏𝒂𝒈𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 & 𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑺𝒆𝒓𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑹𝒆𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒂 𝑳𝒐𝒏𝒈𝒅𝒐𝒏 𝒊𝒔 𝒂 𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 & 𝑫𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒍𝒐𝒑𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝑺𝒑𝒆𝒄𝒊𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕 𝑰𝑰 𝒂𝒕 𝑼𝒏𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝑯𝒐𝒔𝒑𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒔 (𝑼𝑯) 𝒊𝒏 𝑪𝒍𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒅, 𝑶𝒉𝒊𝒐. 𝑼𝑯 𝒊𝒔 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒏𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏’𝒔 𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒕𝒉𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒔𝒚𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒎𝒔.

It was early in 2020, COVID-19 cases were on the rise in the Cleveland area, and our training services team was working from home to avoid exposure to the virus. We were trying to wrap our arms around how to approach Vocera user training and education during the pandemic, since we could no longer safely provide employee training in person.

UH is a 15-hospital system with a large academic medical center and multiple community hospitals, with over 28,000 physicians and employees. We’ve deployed Vocera clinical communication solutions across several of our hospitals and have an ongoing need to train new users and answer questions from established users.

Our Vocera clinical executive, Julia Mason, MBA, BSN, RN, CENP, reached out to see how we were doing soon after COVID-19 hit the Cleveland area. As a former hospital chief nursing officer, she understood that the pandemic had created a new care environment and new challenges for change management and employee training.

We told Julia we needed to find new avenues to assist our Vocera user community and keep them informed about best practices and tips and tricks. She shared an example of how another organization set up their intranet to give employees easy access to Vocera training videos and materials.

Building the IT Training Community

We were inspired to create a similar internal website as a one-stop-shop for employee training on all the technologies deployed across our organization, including those from Vocera. We call the site our IT Training Community. Building it gave us the opportunity to dig in and make sure all our training materials were up to date.

Regina Longdon is our lead trainer and the owner of our Vocera curriculum. She is also a web designer, so she built the IT Training Community. Regina, along with Lisa Carroll, Training Development Specialist at UH, manages the site and materials on it.

Our IT Training Community’s Vocera page includes tips and tricks documents, minute training videos, cleaning guides, frequently asked questions, and more. We showcase Vocera success stories from UH staff members, too, so users can learn from each other.

Partnering to Help Staff Be More Effective

Our IT Training Community allows our staff to be more effective with the tools we’ve given them. This project has been a successful and pleasant experience for everyone because of the strong partnership among multiple groups across organizations working together for the same cause. We all want to make it easy for staff to get the most out of our technology.

Our training team partnered with Tom Metzner, UH’s Senior Unified Communications Apps & Tools Engineer, to make certain that we put the IT Training Community together with the end-user’s perspective at the forefront.

Our hope in sharing the story of our IT Training Community is that it will inspire other organizations to create innovative approaches to employee training that empower care teams during and beyond these challenging times.