Ambulatory Clinician's Guide to Inpatient Service: An Innovative Rapid Onboarding Strategy for the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Background and Significance When hospitals are subject to prolonged surges in patients, such as during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, additional clinicians may be needed to care for the rapid increase of acutely ill patients. How might we quickly prepare a large number of ambulatory-based clinicians to care for hospitalized patients using the inpatient workflow of the electronic health record (EHR)?

Objectives The aim of the study is to create a successful training intervention which prepares ambulatory-based clinicians as they transition to inpatient services.

Methods We created a training guide with embedded videos that describes the workflow of an inpatient clinician. We delivered this intervention via an e-mail hyperlink, a static hyperlink inside of the EHR, and an on-demand hyperlink within the EHR.

Results In anticipation of the first peak of inpatients with COVID-19 in April 2020, the training manual was accessed 261 times by 167 unique users as clinicians anticipated being called into service. As our institution has not yet needed to deploy ambulatory-based clinicians for inpatient service, usage data of the training document is still pending.

Conclusion We intend that our novel implementation of a multimedia, highly accessible onboarding document with access from points inside and outside of the EHR will improve clinician performance and serve as a helpful example to other organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Keywords

COVID-19 - hospitalist - training - electronic health record

Protection of Human and Animal Subjects

Human and animal subjects were not included in this project.

Publikationsverlauf

Eingereicht: 27. Juli 2020

Angenommen: 23. September 2020

Artikel online veröffentlicht:
02. Dezember 2020

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