It certainly feels like we are just moving from one crisis to another in healthcare right now. As we emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, we were suddenly hit with a healthcare workforce challenge. We find ourselves again in a “all-hands-on-deck” situation where every department needs to contribute to solving the problem. But what can healthcare CIOs and IT departments do to help retain clinicians? A new eBook offers five practical ways to help.
The eBook was written in collaboration with CareAlign, a company that provides a secure, HIPAA compliant workspace to build care plans, manage tasks, and generate notes.
Cognitive Load
The eBook is centered on Cognitive Load – the amount of information that a person needs to hold and process to perform an activity like diagnose a patient, document an encounter, or administer medication. It turns out that cognitive load is an overlooked factor in staff dissatisfaction and frustration.
In a nutshell, the higher the cognitive load, the more effort it takes to perform a task. The more effort it takes, the more frustrated people become which can ultimately lead to that person leaving the organization. Tasks with high cognitive load are silently and insidiously sapping the energy from the healthcare workforce.
“We want clinicians to be focused on what they are uniquely positioned to do: diagnostic and clinical reasoning, patient conversations and care planning,” stated Subha Airan-Javia, MD – Founder and CEO at CareAlign. “That work is not only high stakes, but also has an extremely high cognitive load. Pile on top of that searching through book-size electronic charts for each patient, cumbersome workflows that take 10 clicks instead of 1, and you have a perfect storm of things getting missed. Anything to reduce even one click from a clinicians’ day works to help them focus on what matters most: patient care.”
The eBook identifies five “quick-wins” for healthcare CIOs and IT departments that can help reduce the cognitive load on clinicians. I won’t spoil the eBook by revealing all five (you’ll have to download the eBook for that!), but two did stand out for me:
- Reducing the number of userIDs and passwords clinicians have to remember
- Streamlining screens to fit workflows so clinicians can more easily find the information they need
userIDs and Passwords
It only takes a few seconds to type a username and password, but the cognitive load of this process is high, especially if there are multiple systems with multiple userIDs and passwords. Remembering which combination works is taxing.
An easy way to address this is through single sign-on (SSO) where a single userID + password grants access to multiple systems securely. Even better is replacing the password with biometrics (like facial recognition) so that you don’t need to remember a password at all.
Most organizations already have SSO, but there are always new systems that have yet to be integrated. Staying on top of that is a quick win that will help reduce cognitive load.
Presenting the Right Information
One of the most significant cognitive loads presented in the eBook is the mental and physical effort required by clinicians to get to the information they need to care for patients.
A study published in 2020 found that redesigning user interfaces to better suit the needs of clinicians reduced the time by as much as 44%. Those redesigned screens also reduced the error rate to near zero in some cases.
It is unrealistic to try and redesign all the user interfaces that clinicians use, but the eBook does suggest making simple changes like eliminating data fields that are not needed. This will help reduce the visual scanning that is required to find the relevant information. Getting rid of just one or two fields can make difference.
“Giving clinicians quick access to the right information at the right time is essential to improving workflow and the quality of care,” said Dr. Airan-Javia. “Most people don’t realize that 12 patients’ charts have as much text as two copies of Hamlet. It is simply not possible to read through all that information for every patient. Therefore it is critical that we simplify access to intuitive, real-time data so clinicians can make informed, timely decisions. Fewer clicks, More care. That needs to be the goal.”
Check out the eBook: 5 Quick Wins for CIOs to Help with Clinician Retention
CareAlign is a sponsor of Healthcare Scene.
