I recently had two useful pieces of information come to me that illustrate my thoughts on achieving user buy-in to an electronic health record.
One was a tip on blogging from our blog host. It introduced me to the acronym WIIFM. The tip reminded us that readers search for and look at blogs, asking, “What’s in it for me?”
The other information was told to me by a nurse turned techie/implementer in a large system with over 10 institutions. She described the implementations in two of their facilities. In one, the implementation focused on creating reports for the needs of the top managers. In the other, the implementation team created reports designed to meet the needs of the clinical staff. For example, they created a shift change document for nurses and a report showing treatment permissions coming up for renewal. She described that in the first facility, the implementation had a difficult time winning over clinicians. In the second facility, the clinicians had a much more positive attitude and the implementation went much more smoothly.
I believe WIIFM is an absolutely legitimate attitude for a CEO, a supervisor, or a clinician using an EMR. After all we’re talking about the relationship of a user to an electronic health record system It may be long-term but it is not an intimate relationship. WIIFM is OK. So, implementers, ignore it at your peril!
I’d love to hear more stories about where WIIFM fits into your implementation.
