Tena Johnston

I attribute my success to being involved with so many different people in different organizations across the U.S. I've worked in almost every state, probably, in the last 15 years doing consulting. Meeting so many people who are experienced in different things helps give you a different outlook on their experience that you can incorporate in your own. I guess just listening to people, because you learn so much just listening and learning their way, their process, that you can incorporate in yours. Just absorbing it all.

When I was trying to decide if I wanted to leave my full-time job and do consulting, I'm a researcher, so I have to look at everything in all aspects. I reached out to several consultants that I had worked with during our implementation, and I asked, my biggest concern is, what do you do if you don't know how to do something? Because even after a few years, you don't know everything. I mean, I still don't know everything. It changes so much. And she said, well, what do you do today if you don't know how to do something? And I said, well, you know, I reach out to our Epic TS and maybe another analyst on another application that might have some experience. And she said, well, that's what you'll do consulting. If you're not sure, you'll look it up, reach out to someone. That advice really helped me make the transition, and I actually gave similar advice to nurses that I precepted: know what you know. If someone tries to have you do something that you know, because you've looked it up, you have to stand strong in what you know and what you can approve. If you're confident in that, you can't do wrong.

Know your worth. Know what you bring to the table, and don't sell yourself short. Initially, when I went into consulting, you have that uncertainty because they ask you how much money are you asking for. Well, if you've never done this before, or I don't know what the going rate is, so that was one of the things that I researched, just so I know where I land, knowing the experiences, knowing what certifications I have, what experience I have, and where I believe I can best fit them. Just knowing what you bring and being able to highlight those things. I don't cut corners, I don't say things that I think that they want to hear. It's all about my integrity and my belief in the healthcare industry, whether it be bedside or doing their computer assessments. When I have mentored as a team lead, I have a lot of young consultants who may not have worked in the application very long, so they don't have as much build experience as I do. Just building them up to be the best they could be and have them become leaders. That's the important thing, is I'm not going to be here forever, so I have to give what I have so that they can work on their strengths and what they bring to the table, and honoring yourself.

The biggest challenge right now is that the certifications that you have kind of limit you to those areas. I'm working on getting additional certifications. How can I improve on this job? How can I move to the next step? It's very difficult when you're not in a management position but you know how you want things to go. Someone said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. One of the things about doing this electronic health record is it's full of all types of avenues, technology, equipment, all the financial stuff, and you may not know everything there is to know, but to just go to a meeting and talk about the same thing over and over again, and no one takes accountability. Who's in charge, who's going to take this and run with it? I don't want to talk about it for 10 meetings. I want to know what we're gonna do, what's the plan. And not being in charge of that is a struggle. I don't struggle with speaking up. I do that quite often. So even though it's not my responsibility to do the build or get the information, because you're involved in so many meetings together, after 10 meetings saying the same thing, I'll say, okay, so we've talked about this, now what are our next steps? My fear is, do the people on the phone, most of which, especially since COVID, you don't meet, do they understand and know what needs to be done? So you have to speak up about that sometimes.

Quality would probably be one. Communication and connection are also very important. I think it's very important to have open communication, be transparent, be honest, and support. That's what I kind of like to do, is I like to balance that line between having the end users do something that's easy and efficient for them, but also meeting all the guidelines of the facility, of any regulatory bodies, kind of meshing those things together and reaching a good medium.