Training Wheels Aren't Just for Bicycles
By Ann Mendlowitz

Have you ever been part of a system implementation where you had to develop training materials from scratch? If you have, you know what a struggle it can be to remember all of the details you want to incorporate into the end user manuals. It is hard enough trying to review workflows and validate that all of the details have been incorporated into your material. On previous projects, I had to develop a project plan just to keep track of the development of end user and Train-the-Trainer training manuals.

For this reason, Epic^® created Training Wheels. Training Wheels is a starter kit of information that can be used to assist in building your end user and Train-the-Trainer manuals. Each Epic application (Cadence^®, Prelude^®, EpicCare^® Ambulatory, etc.) has its own kit of training information. The information includes, lesson plans which include exercises and questions, master patient build spreadsheets and spreadsheets to assist with tracking of your progress and assessments.

The lesson plans will need to be customized to your organization’s training needs. Each lesson plan will address the functionality of the Epic application and helpful hints/reminders that you might want to use. Exercises and review questions with answers are also included in the lesson plan. The exercises will step through each piece of the application. If you are teaching only Epic functionality, the lesson plans will need only minor adjustments.

I found that after I refined the lesson plans, writing the curriculum was much easier than previous implementations. During the writing of the end user and Train-the-Trainer manuals, I was able to refer to the lesson plan to validate that I had addressed every step within the application.

The application you are teaching will determine how much pre-build you need for the student exercises. I have spent numerous hours establishing the pre-build requirements for the master patients. Now, Training Wheels contains a spreadsheet, which outlines the pre-build of master patients. The spreadsheet includes very detailed generic demographic information for the patient, guarantor and subscriber information. There is also a section where you can correlate the exercises with each master patient. Depending upon your organization, you will need to customize the spreadsheet.

After the master patients are built, you can use the Patient Duplicator to duplicate your master patient. Patient Duplicator is an efficient way to duplicate a patient so each exercise will have the same results. There is one flaw with Patient Duplicator; you cannot copy patient information, such as charges, that are sitting in the Temporary Accounts Receivable (TAR). This will impact the build of charge review work queue exercises.

The pros for using Training Wheels are:

• Eliminates the need for brainstorming sessions to outline training needs.
• Provides detailed lesson plans for Epic functionality.
• Ensure consistent format for the lesson plans regardless of the application.
• Cuts the lesson plan preparation time in half.
• Expedites the development of the end user and Train-the-Trainer materials.

In conclusion, my experience using Epic’s Training Wheels has cut the development time of lesson plans and end user materials by half. The use of Patient Duplicator has assisted in alleviating the errors that can occur when multiple individuals assist with the pre-build of the training patients the end users will use in their exercises. If you would like more information on Epic and the VCS Epic Practice, please feel free to contact me directly at amendlowitz@getvitalized.com or call us at 610-444-1233.