Open Minded Knowledge Transfer

Tiger lilly thanks to http://www.eecs.northwestern.edu

The last few weeks have been quite a ride here in EHR land. Since reaching the halfway point in the implementation, this last half of the project is like riding down a rollercoaster drop after the slow ascent to the top. Hold on, everyone! We are on our way to improved health care for everyone in Idaho County!

Every week between now and Go Live on October 1 we will have teams of people from ePartners, emPower and Cerner onsite. They are validating the data we’ve provided over the last several months, confirming that it is correct, in the right places, and actually “works” for us within the software. Additionally, they are providing training to our Super Users and key end users.

This week over 30 employees spent two and three days in training with their Cerner solution architects. Once Cerner leaves, these Super Users will continue to practice their new skills in our TRAIN DOMAIN, an online training environment. By the time End User training rolls around in September, these Super Users will know the system inside and out. They will, according to Cerner, perform the “knowledge transfer” process to others. In Syringa speak, that means they will train and teach others to use the system.

The term knowledge transfer reminds me of Alice in Through the Looking Glass, when she found her way to a garden full of talking flowers. Once Alice adjusted her preconceived notion that flowers are not supposed to speak to people, she had a nice conversation about who cared for the flowers. The answer: A tree in the middle of the garden. When any danger came near, it “barked” and that’s why its branches were called “boughs”. Interesting bit of Knowledge Transfer, there, eh?

Then Alice asked the Tiger Lily how it was that the flowers could speak so nicely. The Tiger Lily had Alice put her hand upon the ground. It was very hard.

“In most gardens,” the Tiger Lily said, “they make the beds too soft – so that the flowers are always asleep.”

An open mind and heart will obviously be a great help in the learning process. Alice, while she had some notion of flowers in her mind, was able to suspend her version of “right way flowers should behave” in order to learn something new.

So it will be with us learning our new software, processes and procedures. With an eye to improving health care for our patients, we can learn new ways to perform old tasks which are more efficient and safe – as long as we allow ourselves to rethink our “this is the way we’ve always done it” ideas. This is our opportunity to shape how health care in the future will look, act and feel.