Training The Trainers
One of the things we do like to do is train the trainer. We begin with a Zoom call or some sort of virtual meeting, where we actually get some of the main points of contact on site—some of the leaders in the Anesthesia Department or the actual anesthesia directors—and train them how to use our software. The intent isn’t simply training, but to empower them to become leaders, as far as where support goes, for their own anesthesia team. We not only make sure that we fully train them on our iPad app and how the forms work, but also on how to answer questions or how to escalate them to the Graphium Support team. Essentially, they will be training their own team on how to use this software. This method ensures that there’s someone on every shift to whom the anesthesia team can take their questions as a kind of front-line of support.
The greatest advantage of having a super user on your team is that you eliminate the need to call Graphium’s support team to make routine changes. While our support staff is happy to help and is always standing by, you may need to add a medication to your Graphium formulary in the middle of a case, and a call or text to Graphium may not be convenient. The trained super user can have this done in a flash without having to make an extra call.
The Typical Onboarding Timeline
Our team of 2 trainers will work with yours to pick an on-site go-live date that works best–preferably when the bulk of your staff can be available. The Graphium trainers usually travel on a Monday and arrive on site early Tuesday morning an hour before the first case starts—usually around 6:00am.
Typically, the trainers set up a sort of headquarters in the anesthesia break room. One trainer remains there to train providers and field questions that may arise. The other trainer, when requested, follows anesthesia providers into the OR to ensure smooth charting.
And really after the first day, the majority of people are pretty much up to speed. By noon of the same day, most users are 100% ready to use Graphium independently. The rest of the day is devoted to helping with any incidental questions that arise and more admin-level training. Day 2, then, is usually devoted to training any staff who were unable to attend the previous day and ensuring that all are confident in using the system.
The most boring onboardings are the best onboardings, and we don’t anticipate any adventures with yours.
The Anesthesia Provider’s Experience
When, as an anesthesia provider, you show up to be trained, you’ll first be shown how to use the forms. And one of us, on site, can actually follow you into the OR and stand with you in case you have questions. Naturally, this is all about your preference and level of confidence with the system. The majority of our new users don’t require our attendance in the OR after being trained in the break room, but we are happy to provide the support that best suits you.
If you haven’t had hands on the system before the onboarding and are feeling uneasy, then one of the things that we suggest is that you use paper in tandem for your first few cases. It’s not recommended or necessarily ideal, but you do get to actually use the software in a live environment, with people that can come in and help you at a moment’s notice. And with your paper record there, should you get overwhelmed, you can simply put Graphium aside until the next case or until a trainer can help you out in the OR or in the break room.
Change Requests During Onboarding
When you are utilizing the software during these first days, you’ll be able to use the templates feature—our built-in, customizable feature that will automatically fill out various portions of your form—to make charting even quicker. Often, users are prompted at this point to think of different pieces of data that ought to be included in templates or even changes they would like to make to their forms overall. These are valuable and important pieces of feedback that we—your group and Graphium together—need to consider as a team. But before making changes on the spot, we accumulate all of these suggestions over a two-week period and encourage users to submit them to us through their main point of contact on-site.
This process helps in several ways. First of all, we want to make sure that your entire team is on the same page with any changes that we make. Since we’ve already gone through the process of verifying exactly what your team wants on forms, we need to ensure that the changes are essential and valuable. Furthermore, we often find that a user requests a change to the form or to our software but finds out, upon further experience with the system, that their need is already met in another area of the application.
We believe our application to be very intuitive and complete, so we seldom have a valid request that we haven’t received previously. And in most cases, we’ve addressed that request somewhere in our software.
And don’t take that as patronizing blather. When we do have our meeting at the end of two weeks after our actual go live event, your feedback and the conversation around it are invaluable. As our team gets more and more used to how our system works, listening to fresh ideas from fresh eyes on our product often produces some of the most stellar pieces of our development roadmap.
And we’re like, “You know what? That would work globally. We would do that for everybody.” So that’s why it’s another good thing to encourage. But onboarding itself… Another thing that I tend to tell everyone, and I repeat this often, is about nine to ten forms, you do about nine to ten cases and…
The #1 Support Request Post Go-Live
By far, the support request that our team receives the most is this:
Password Reset.
Graphium’s app works much like other contemporary software. You can simply click a link in the app that says “Forgot Password?,” enter your user name, and you’ll receive an email with a link to reset your password.
Regardless, though, we still get plenty of calls for help when someone has forgotten their password. And we get it–you might have made up a complex password on the spot while we were training, and the safer the password the more difficult it is to remember. No judgement here.
But there is something you can do about it that will help you not only in Graphium but also with all of your passwords: A Password Manager.
A password manager can generate unique, complex passwords for all of your user accounts (Graphium included), store them securely for you, and autofill them for you on whichever login page you visit. You never need to memorize passwords or, worse, store them in an unsafe location like a sticky note under your keyboard.
You have several options. Graphium employees use 1Password as their password manager and are thrilled with it. Not only does it solve those inconvenient issues with remembering passwords, but it’s also one of the ways we maintain our SOC II compliance. We highly recommend a similar solution for your practice.
Post Go-Live Follow-Ups
The best way to contact a wide set of support personnel at Graphium is to send an email to [email protected]. While you will likely be on a first-name basis with a support contact at Graphium and know how to reach out to them directly, emailing the support line will ensure that your email goes to a team of people and will still be addressed in the event that that employee is out on vacation, for instance.
You may also hear from our marketing team after go-live. We want to know that you’re satisfied with our software and we want to make practicing anesthesia better for all involved, so we may even ask you for a testimonial that we could share. We also have a YouTube Channel and a weekly podcast where we’d love to feature your company.
Listen to the Time Out with Dr. Z Podcast
The Time Out with Dr. Z YouTube Channel
