Expanding access to quality healthcare is one of the four points of engagement for National Health IT Week. Shutting Down Silos: The Key to Moving Health IT Forward provides a high level summary of the importance of service line collaboration and re-emphasizes the need for interoperability frameworks.
While these approaches address high level issues that may impede the removing of silos, it is also important to consider the smaller silos that affect the day to day interactions of an Informatics Pharmacist. How many opportunities do we have during a typical day to help disseminate knowledge in a useful manner instead of just taking a fix it and forget it approach? Are we utilizing these chances to take a pause in our day and provide education about the solution?
The Electronic Health Record (EHR) is constantly evolving and changing and rarely offers us just one correct way to address an issue. Whether your team is large and integrated across a healthcare enterprise or you are an N of 1, the benefits of a pause to educate can be realized. Within your pharmacy group, this moment of education fosters an environment of knowledge sharing and cross training. Sharing this knowledge with your global EHR team brings light to who can best assist with specific requests and expedite future requests that cross disciplines. Engaging key stakeholders can help ensure an understanding of the solution to the incident or change and help foster better clarity around future requests.
Flipping the approach, there is also utility to pausing and asking for education. Training provided to an Informatics Pharmacist can often be hyper-specific and focus only on the essential skills that are perceived to be needed for the role, regardless of if the training, comes from the institution or the vendor. Reinventing the wheel can be a tiresome endeavor, so seeking assistance from those with the knowledge can save time and effort.
Data standards and interoperability will continue to be vital to expanding access to quality healthcare, and identifying and breaking down the smaller silos through education and collaboration will prove valuable as well. So I encourage all of us to take the time during our busy days to look for those opportunities where a pause to educate could pay dividends in the future.