Digital Doctors and Nurses Accelerate Onboarding

Onboarding new hires in a healthcare environment is intense and is one reason why the digital doctor is here to stay. In today’s environment, healthcare staff members are overworked and have little time to orient new recruits. They need to be confident that their new hires will hit the ground running and succeed with limited mentorship. To do this, they need reassurance that the people they hire have the skills they need to do what is expected of them.

When a person is hired in the healthcare profession, clinical skills are one part of a successful equation, but not the only part. Common onboarding techniques include mentorships, slide shows, role-playing, and other basic orientation, but miss many key competencies. Since many of the required skills in the healthcare environment are social, cultural, and interpersonal in nature, techniques like slide shows fail to capture the whole picture. Virtual training simulations can play an important role in this context. Here are a few examples of competencies that can be developed through virtual simulation:

Decision-making: Given a certain situation, what problem solving approach do you want to encourage?

Prioritization: When multiple patients need attention at the same time, how does a nurse decide what to do?

Communication: What is the most effective approach to exchanging medical details with other healthcare professionals?

De-escalation: What should healthcare professionals do to calm a patient and when should he/she get help from others?

Promoting positive patient experiences: How can the healthcare professional impact the patient experience through words and actions?

Familiarization with facility equipment: How do new hires learn to operate equipment specific to your facility?

Virtual training simulations are an important part of a blended learning curriculum that help new hires learn critical competencies. Virtual simulation can be used in a class environment or individually by the new hire. Within a class environment, the virtual simulation can lead discussion. The instructor can let the class decide which step to take next and why. Different alternatives can be analyzed and the class can develop an understanding as a group. This type of social learning is important for a team that will be working long hours together.

Virtual simulation also works well to train individually. It is available 24/7 and can offer a private learning situation. The new hire can explore different avenues and become comfortable at their own pace. Learning can be intimidating and overwhelming, but virtual simulation offers an individualized alternative to gaining experience. With virtual simulation, new hires can participate in scenarios they can expect to encounter on the job and demonstrate their ability to successfully navigate complex decision-making and prioritization.

Virtual simulation is an effective approach to on boarding that translates to considerable time savings and consistent quality in producing prepared staff that are up-to-speed quickly.

Thanks for reading. Please share with colleagues who might find value. This post was authored by Discovery Machine, creators of RESITE for Healthcare. RESITE enables healthcare professionals to quickly and easily create realistic training scenarios for their healthcare trainees—complete with digital doctors, nurses, patients, medical equipment, beds, rooms—everything found in a hospital setting. RESITE places trainees into an immersive 3D environment that helps them learn faster and see the cause/effect relationship of their decisions and hands-on interaction in real time. With over 16 years in the industry Discovery Machine delivers powerful, proven technology with a friendly, accessible front-end that translates to successful training programs empowered with intelligent interaction. For more information about RESITE for Healthcare, please visit Discovery Machine online or call 570-601-3226.