Reaching Employees Who Never Sit: How This Medical Center Trains and Supports Nonstop Staff

Augusta University Medical Center is a public academic health center based in Augusta Georgia. As the only regional trauma center in the area, the facility conducts leading-edge clinical research and fosters the medical education and training of tomorrow’s health care practitioners. The facility provides emergency general surgery, trauma, and surgical critical care with a daily census of 15 to 20 patients. This nonstop staff is constantly on their feet attending to patients and fulfilling critical responsibilities. 

The Problem:

This community of caregivers includes nurses, residents, fellows, attendings, students, and other frontline workers. With such a diverse, busy team the client faced two major inefficiencies: providing easy access to all resources and communicating timely messages.

“We are very busy, nobody sits at their desk, so when we found the technology that Engage by Cell allowed us to use, it was super beneficial,” says Dr. Lawson in a recent presentation. He continues, “We had [staff resources] in 20 different areas around the hospital intranet that the residents, medical students, and even my partners didn't know how to access.”

The Solution:

The medical center leverages two Engage by Cell platforms: Text Messaging and Mobile Web Apps. Text messaging provides an efficient way to deliver important messages to segmented lists of employees. Dr. Lawson and his team utilize the platform for general text message reminders about meetings, events, sponsored lunches, evaluations due, training reminders.

Our cloud based mobile web app provides a tailored approach to engage and support employees. The drag-and-drop interface allows administrators to house or create resources like PDFs, video, audio, quizzes, surveys and more. This ensures that crucial knowledge and resources are accessible anytime, anywhere.

The app features categories for nurses, attendings, residents, fellows, and other resources.  “When a trauma patient comes in, I want them to be treated in a specific way, and I don't want to reinvent the wheel every time, because sometimes it's life threatening. So, we need to make sure those residents have the information at their fingertips.” The app also includes medical calculators, schedules, useful phone numbers, lunch menus, and other tools applicable to all employees and students. The tool encourages employee engagement by providing opportunities for feedback on lectures, courses, even student performance.

Access & Retention:

These platforms are praised by leadership and staff as a huge time saver and very necessary tool in day to day operations. Dr. Lawson shares “The idea was to put a lot of things in there that they are using on a daily basis to sort of incentivise them to use the app regularly.” Employees and students can get access to the new tool by delivering the link via text, or posting a QR code in high traffic areas of the facility. Dr. Lawson says, “We set the QR code at my admin desk and they just come by and scan it. It hasn't been an issue, they’ve loved it. It's so usable to them in a way they didn't have before.”

Conclusion:

The healthcare industry faces unique challenges in training and supporting staff members who are always on the move. Engage by Cell’s innovative approach helps organizations like Augusta University Medical Center create a more engaged and empowered workforce. Together, text messaging and mobile web apps allow administrators to deliver real-time updates, training modules, educational quizzes, and important information directly to the employees' fingertips.

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Watch the full presentation featuring Engage by Cell’s CEO Dave Asheim and Augusta University Medical Center’s Dr. Andrew Lawson at World at Work 2022 above.