At Voalte we do a lot more than build effective communication tools for hospital clinicians. We also provide the long-term service and support necessary to make sure our customers get the most value from their smartphone investment. Starting with our customized end-user training, we build long-term relationships with clinicians in every Voalte hospital.After a hospital chooses Voalte, our Training Specialists are usually the first “pink pants people” to meet the clinical staff. As part of our top-notch Services team, Voalte Training Specialists are responsible for end-user and super-user training in a classroom setting prior to go-live. They have exhaustive knowledge of how our products function and are well-versed in talking through various clinical workflows. They also have an infectious enthusiasm for sharing the benefits that improved communication brings to each unit in every hospital.
That positive attitude goes a long way when we’re training nurses who may have never used a smartphone, or are resistant to changing their traditional ways of working. After all, any tool is only as good as the team that’s using it. If a hospital has 10 people on a shift and only eight are using their Voalte smartphones, you’re still going to have communication breakdowns. Our training sessions get everyone up to speed, providing a safe place for nurses to practice sending texts and receiving alerts before their actions can impact a real patient’s care.
It’s also where our Training Specialists, nurses and their managers troubleshoot the system before it’s live. Sometimes we find minor issues with the Directory, for example, such as two similar units that should be listed together. Working with the Project Management teams at Voalte and the hospital, these minor adjustments can be made before the go-live day.
We also work in advance with Project Management to customize every training session to each hospital’s unique workflow and needs. In fact, it’s often the Training Specialists who pull together the hospital’s IT and clinical teams to collaborate on the best way to get everyone up and running. By the end of most training classes, the staff inevitably tells us how much they enjoyed the class, how comfortable they feel with the user-friendly Voalte One app, and how confident they are going out on their unit and starting to use it right away.
This week, Project Manager Kelly Van Vleet and I are preparing for a trip to Alaska to meet our newest customers at Samuel Simmonds Memorial Hospital. Barrow is the northernmost city in the United States, and Samuel Simmonds is the first hospital in Alaska to choose Voalte smartphones as its communication alternative. With a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility, the staff has had to learn how to use a lot of new technology recently. On our first trip we’ll be doing a pre-training session to present them with a high-level view of how Voalte One works, give the staff a sense of what they can expect when they switch to smartphones, and identify the specific workflow issues we need to address. We’ll go back again later in November to conduct custom, hands-on training classes just before their new system goes live.
Our Training Specialists are always eager to meet the people who depend on Voalte smartphones to do their jobs every day. This trip is especially exciting as we prepare to leave sunny southwest Florida for a place so far north we’ll see more hours of darkness than light. We may need to pack some fur-lined pink pants for this project.