The EHR Training Engagement Problem — And What Actually Works

Dr. Chestek opened with a story that made the room laugh — and probably cringe in recognition. A colleague shared a photo of one learner’s COVID-era virtual, instructor-led training setup: a video game on one screen, EHR training on the other.

The lesson isn’t that clinicians are disengaged. It’s that we built training disengaging enough to compete with a video game — and lost.

The answer isn’t more training. It’s better-designed training. Fairview ran a March Madness-style competition where clinicians voted on the most useful EHR tips week by week. The winning tips, including smart phrases, preference lists, in-basket quick actions, turned out to also be the most genuinely useful. The internal buzz drove more clicks, more learning, and higher adoption.

A slide from uPerform’s Industry Partner Session at AMIA Amplify 2026 showcases Fairview’s Epic Madness tournament environment.

This kind of consumer-inspired approach to clinician education is part of a broader philosophy Fairview’s education team has been building at Fairview for years — one he explored in depth earlier this year on the Becker’s Healthcare Podcast. That sustained investment has yielded measurable results: Fairview has eliminated 24,000 onboarding hours annually and saves $2M in training costs each year by shifting to asynchronous, workflow-embedded learning.

Just-in-Time Learning: Put the Road Signs on the Road

One of the most transferable EHR training best practices from the session: stop expecting clinicians to remember training from a month ago. Meet them where they are, when they need it.

It’s a principle fellow uPerform advisor, Dr. CT Lin, CMIO at UCHealth, has been championing for years — he called it “putting road signs on the road, not in the garage” at uPerform’s 2023 AMIA panel on just-in-time EHR training. Three years later, the same recommendation surfaces: don’t count on people remembering training; put it where they’ll see it when they need it most.

Fairview’s Chief Clinical & Nursing Informatics Officer, Anne LaFlamme, DNP, RN has put this philosophy into practice across their entire Epic training strategy — including for their eConsent rollout, where embedding a short instructional video directly in the workflow lifted adoption from 7% to 87%. Her nine tips for building a virtual Epic training program are worth a read for any informatics leader rethinking how learning gets delivered at scale. This approach is also the core idea behind uPerform’s in-workflow delivery — embedding role-specific guidance directly inside the EHR, so support is always available at the moment of need. Fairview clinicians who actively use those resources report Net EHR Experience Scores 19 points higher than non-users, per a case study published by KLAS Research.

Microlearning Beats Marathons: Format Matters

Dr. Chestek also debuted a format worth stealing: a fun microlearning video where “informatics Dr. Chestek” explains Epic’s new AI features to “clinical Dr. Chestek.” Short, punchy, watchable — the kind of content clinicians might actually choose to watch.

The broader point: clinicians are consumers. They’ve been conditioned by years of short-form video to expect concise, relevant content. TikTok-length microlearning wins over virtual classrooms every time — not just in engagement, but in retention and application.

90-Day Action Plan for Informatics Leaders

The session closed with a practical challenge: What’s one thing you could realistically start or strengthen in the next 90 days?

Three starting points from the discussion:

• Embed one piece of training at the point of friction. Find the workflow where clinicians are most likely to get stuck after a recent update. Put a two-minute video right there.
• Replace one classroom session with a short-form alternative. Pilot a microlearning video or a tip competition. Measure whether engagement improves.
• Redefine what “working” looks like. Completion rates are a proxy. The real signals are behavioral: Are clinicians using the new workflow? Are support tickets dropping?

The conversation at AMIA reinforced what uPerform hears from health systems every day: the organizations making progress aren’t the ones with the biggest training teams. They’re the ones that have stopped treating EHR education as a one-time event and started treating it as an ongoing strategy.

FAQS

What are EHR training best practices for large health systems?

Leading organizations are moving away from one-time, classroom-based sessions toward asynchronous, continuous learning embedded in the workflow. Key practices include just-in-time support at the point of friction, short-form microlearning content, role-based delivery, and measuring behavioral outcomes rather than completion rates.

What is just-in-time EHR training?

Just-in-time EHR training delivers learning support directly in the workflow, at the moment a clinician needs it — rather than in advance during a classroom or eLearning session. Examples include embedded video links in the EHR navigator, or in-application tip sheets triggered at specific workflow steps.

How do you measure the effectiveness of EHR training?

Beyond completion rates, effective EHR training programs track behavioral signals: EHR workflow adoption rates, reduction in help desk tickets, clinician satisfaction scores, and time-on-task metrics. Organizations at the leading edge are also tying education outcomes to broader quality and efficiency measures.