Finding the right employees to staff your eyecare practice can be challenging. High turn over and inconsistent staff can cause a lot of stress and hurry you through the hiring process. Sometimes there is the debate over whether to hire for skill or personality. In many cases, personality wins out because most skills can be taught. And in this case, we are looking at some tips you can use to help train that new employee who has the great personality but may be lacking in the experiences you were hoping to find. 

Training New Employees on Your EHR Software

Identify Computer Skills

If you're worried about a candidate's ability to work well with your software, dive deeper into their computer experience that might not be visible from their resume. If they don't have previous EHR software experience, it doesn't mean that they won't be quick learners - they could still be very tech savvy with computers in their personal time. Signs of computer use outside of their resume will show that they will likely be able to pick up a new system quicker than those who don't spend much time with technology. 

Let Them Explore

Once you've brought on a new employee, let them spend some time exploring the new system without any pressure. Getting familiar with the EHR and practice management system is an important step in the process for new hires, or if you're implementing a new system to your entire office. The time to explore will lead them to find little tricks and shortcuts they may not notice if they are only following strick training lessons.

Problem Solve

As a part of a new employee training system you could come up with a few different patient scenarios and see how the employee works through the system and solves any problems. This type of training is likely to give staff better results, and will help them remember how they worked through each process instead of just showing them how it's done without letting them figure it out on their own. 

Shadow

Shadowing with new employees can go both ways. First let the new hire shadow other employees in the practice, with real patients. Then, once they are more comfortable, your experienced staff can shadow the new hire and help them work through any questions they might have. After each shadow session let the two employees sit down together and get feedback on the questions that came up, or talk about the things they liked with the system and what went well.

Use Resources from Your Vendor

Your software vendor wants you to be successful with their system, so don't forget to turn to them if you're in need of additional training. Plus, for both new and current employees training should be an ongoing process. With cloud-based practice management and EHR, the system is constantly going to be updating so staying on top of the changes will help keep everyone trained on the best ways to take full advantage of the system. 

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