Learning the ropes: How Unity Health Toronto trained thousands on a new digital system

L to R: Jamie Howarth, EPR Change Management and Education Senior Advisor; Faiza Zahir, Manager of EPR Education Delivery; Mark Kinach, Operations Lead for Digital Education.

In his 20 years with St. Michael’s Hospital, Mark Kinach can’t think of a more transformative time in the organization’s history.

On Nov. 30, Unity Health Toronto will launch its new electronic patient record (EPR) system, powered by Epic Systems, modernizing communication and information sharing between patients, families and their care teams. This major clinical transformation project will improve the way that clinical teams deliver care and empower patients to play a more significant role in their care journey.

“I started as a porter at St. Michael’s as a summer job and have been with the organization ever since,” says Kinach, now the Operations Lead for Digital Education at Unity Health. “Integration of three hospital sites to become Unity Health Toronto was a big change, but launching our new EPR is bigger – this is really a first of its kind for the organization.”

This story is part of a series on the launch of Unity Health’s new electronic patient record (EPR) system, powered by Epic Systems. These stories recognize the many people who made this project possible, and provide important information for Unity Health patients and caregivers as they plan to navigate the new system when it launches on November 30, 2024.

Currently, St. Michael’s Hospital, St. Joseph’s Health Centre and Providence Healthcare each have their own electronic or paper-based systems for clinical and corporate processes. Learning how to use a new system can be daunting for staff and physicians, which is why a strong training and education program is critical.

That’s where the EPR Change Management and Education team, with support from the Digital Education team and others across the organization, come in. They’ve developed a training program, resources and environment to support almost 15,000 staff, physicians and learners in using the new system. Even more impressive: they’re getting everyone trained in under two months.

Best-laid plans

Faiza Zahir, Manager of EPR Education Delivery, has spent more than a year planning and implementing the training program. This started with a literature review to decide on the best training model, then hiring hundreds of staff to support training delivery, and understanding all of the different roles across Unity Health to develop role-specific training.

Zahir says a key early step was creating a training leadership working group to collect feedback and guidance from leaders across the organization that would help to design a training program that was relevant and effective. This included key considerations for each of the many roles at Unity Health, as well as any technical issues there might be.

“This was important because training isn’t just about our clinical staff,” she says. “For example, with the new EPR an environmental services cleaner will need to learn how to accept and complete cleaning requests or mark beds as clean in the system. It’s important that I have a system-wide lens on the various roles that require training and that has helped me prepare mitigation strategies based on identified challenges.”

There are 215 different learning plans for staff, physicians and learners, which require a large team that supports the designing of the curriculum, the management of training registration and classroom set-up, as well as the delivery of the training.

Super users

Any large-scale change can be difficult, so having some local champions across the organization is key to making sure that staff and physicians feel supported when the new system goes live.

That’s where the super users come in.

Super users are Unity Health staff who expressed interest in supporting their colleagues and peers with the system during training and once it’s live.  

Jamie Howarth is the EPR Change Management and Education Senior Advisor. His role has included planning the training for super users and ensuring they’re enrolled in various training sessions.

“Super users complete the same training as everyone else, but they have more stages to their training in order to successfully support their colleagues with the system,” says Howarth.

In September, over 900 super users became the first to gain access to the new EPR system. Super user training involves an introduction to the project and the super user program; equity, diversity and inclusion training; as well as a session to set them up with tools to provide additional effective support for their peers during go-live.

“Super user training also includes supporting an instructor who is training their peers in one of the classes they’ve already taken,” says Howarth. “So they’re naturally building their confidence as a super user because they’re getting not only exposed to the content for a second time, but they’re actually working in an environment where they’re dealing with people who are using the system for the first time and hearing those frequently asked questions.”

This comfort and confidence will help when the system is live, as super users help their colleagues work through any hiccups in real time.

Having the right tools for the job

Training on this new system is critical to ensure patient safety. Which is why it’s important for the EPR education team, as well as unit managers, to know and track who is registering and successfully completing their training.

The Digital Education team at Unity Health supports the design and development of online learning initiatives across the organization. Typical projects include creating courses, developing online quizzes, hosting video or digital resources, coordinating enrollments for education sessions, and running the learning management system.

EPR preparations happened to coincide with the launch of the organization’s new learning management system – known as Elevate. This system houses online courses and learning resources that range from mandatory courses, like privacy training, to professional development opportunities.

Kinach says the timing for updating the organization’s learning management system couldn’t have been better.

“We had just launched Elevate in March 2024 when the need for EPR training came around and basically pivoted immediately to figure out a design for training,” Kinach recalls.

“We’ve been working closely with the EPR Education team and pulling in expertise from our Simulation program, our Centre for Faculty Development and our Student Centre to help design the workflows for enrolling folks into training, housing and delivering all the online training content, and testing our staff and students’ proficiency in the new EPR.”

Providing data to leaders that they could use to track progress towards the goal of preparing to go live with a new EPR at the end of November was also an important part of the work, Kinach adds.

As part of preparing for the new EPR system, Kinach and the Digital Education team also rolled out a digital literacy program to teach staff how to use various digital devices they might not be familiar with because they had never had to use them before.

“A lot of that is really taken for granted nowadays because our kids or grandkids are digital natives – everybody’s using computers and phones and things like that. But our staff are not all from that generation,” Kinach says.

“We’ve got various levels of expertise in these tools and in these types of workflows. You really need to start from the ground up and address that across the organization, so we can all thrive and do our best.”

Ready for launch

When asked about the most exciting part of the new EPR, Zahir, Howarth and Kinach all share the same answer – data.

“The idea of a single system with a single source of clean data has always been very appealing to me as someone who has worked as a project manager and in education,” Howarth says.

“We are all doing such amazing things at Unity, like with AI, and seeing how AI can shape patient care is fascinating. Having the opportunity to review in-the-moment data will help us incorporate evidence-based practice, create more personalized treatment plans, streamline workflows, and ultimately enhance patient outcomes – I’m literally getting goosebumps!” says Zahir.

She adds it’s the excitement of what the new system can help the organization do that puts into perspective why training is so important.

“I want our people to feel comfortable navigating the system,” she says. “It is really important to me that we do our due diligence so they are equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to use the new EPR system’s tools to make informed decisions that drive innovation in our care delivery and empower our teams to provide the best possible care.”

By Danielle Pereira. Photos by Katie Cooper.