Today I went with my son to tryouts for flag football. My son has always been active, but he’s never played in organized sports before. Needless to say, I went to the tryouts with a little trepidation for how he’d do. Many of the other kids had been playing already for a couple years. Would he understand what the coach was asking him to do? Would he pick up the terminology? Would he regret not paying attention all those times his dad was watching football on TV?
As I thought about this experience, I realized that it parallels the experience of many patients. Every patient arrives at the doctor’s office or hospital with a different level of health literacy. While we all have different levels of health literacy, we pretty much run all patients through the same process. There’s a reason that many people call it the healthcare machine. From the point that you check-in as a patient until you’re discharged, it’s kind of like being put in a machine until the machine decides to spit you out. Sometimes you know what’s going on and other times patients get sent home not exactly sure what happened to them and what else is to come.
After tryouts today, that’s kind of how my son felt. I asked him what he thought of it. Another kid was there too and he said that the best part was catching the ball. Then, he added, “But practices are going to be much harder than that.” I looked at my son to see how he responded to that idea, but I think he was oblivious to what the other kid was saying. Seems a lot like many patients that get sent home from our healthcare organizations. They aren’t exactly sure what happened to them and they’re not sure what’s to come. That’s a lot of faith that patients put into the healthcare system.
The same is true with many when it comes to healthcare technology. There’s varying levels of technical proficiency. Many highly trained doctors go into a new job having no clue how to use a new or different EHR. They probably feel a bit like my son going to these tryouts. They’re not sure what to expect. However, in some ways it’s worse than my son. These are grown adults with more education than almost everyone on the planet, so it’s a bit of a hit to the ego when they’re not sure how to use the EHR. It’s no surprise that it’s overwhelming and why many of them are afraid to ask for help. They don’t want to look incompetent even though it should be completely reasonable that there’s a learning curve when it comes to a new IT system.
The real question for my son is how will the coaches respond to him. Will they understand that it’s his first time and help him learn or will they brand him as unathletic and focus on the more athletic children who have already learned. I feel pretty lucky that my son is quite resilient and pretty fearless, so I’m confident he’ll be ok. However, there’s a lesson hear for IT professionals as well. How you respond to the doctor who doesn’t know how to use the EHR matters as well. If you go in judgmental, the walls will go up and the doctor will continue to use less than optimal workflows that lead to plenty of burnout. No doubt the doctor plays a role here too just like my son has to be willing to listen to the coaches.
The biggest challenge with healthcare today is we don’t really give clinicians the time to slow down and help when health literacy is a problem. The front desk is busy. The nurse is busy. The doctor is busy. Ironically, the pharmacists have been one of my best experiences when it comes to clinicians being willing to slow down and educate me…but pharmacists are busy too. Many would argue this same thing is true with doctors having time to address IT literacy problems.
I’m not sure the solution here. Maybe it is an AI bot that helps teach us what we need to know since the workforce problem in healthcare is only going to get worse. My son could hop on YouTube and learn pretty much anything he wants about football. We’ll see if he cares enough to do that or if he’s fine just floating along at practice and learning a little at a time. Sounds a lot like many patients in healthcare. I know I fit in that camp.
As goes the effort goes the success in any endeavor.