Navigating Through Electronic Health Records: Survey Study on Medical Students' Perspectives in General and With Regard to a Specific Training

Overview

Journal JMIR Med Inform

Publisher JMIR Publications

Specialty Medical Informatics

Date 2019 Nov 13

PMID 31714247

Citations 5

Authors

Anne Herrmann-Werner

Martin Holderried

Teresa Loda

Nisar Malek

Stephan Zipfel

Friederike Holderried

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: An electronic health record (EHR) is the state-of-the-art method for ensuring all data concerning a given patient are up to date for use by multidisciplinary hospital teams. Therefore, medical students need to be trained to use health information technologies within this environment from the early stages of their education.

Objective: As little is known about the effects of specific training within the medical curriculum, this study aimed to develop a course module and evaluate it to offer best practice teaching for today's students. Moreover, we looked at the acceptance of new technologies such as EHRs.

Methods: Fifth-year medical students (N=104) at the University of Tübingen took part in a standardized two-day training procedure about the advantages and risks of EHR use. After the training, students performed their own EHR entries on hypothetical patient cases in a safe practice environment. In addition, questionnaires-standardized and with open-ended questions-were administered to assess students' experiences with a new teaching module, a newly developed EHR simulator, the acceptance of the health technology, and their attitudes toward it before and after training.

Results: After the teaching, students rated the benefit of EHR training for medical knowledge significantly higher than before the session (mean 3.74, SD 1.05). However, they also had doubts about the long-term benefit of EHRs for multidisciplinary coworking after training (mean 1.96, SD 0.65). The special training with simulation software was rated as helpful for preparing students (88/102, 86.2%), but they still did not feel safe in all aspects of EHR.

Conclusions: A specific simulated training on using EHRs helped students improve their knowledge and become more aware of the risks and challenges of such a system. Overall, students welcomed the new training module and supported the integration of EHR teaching into the medical curriculum. Further studies are needed to optimize training modules and make use of long-term feedback opportunities a simulated system offers.

Citing Articles

Let EHRs Click in the Medical School Curriculum.

Solanki P, Nikiforova T, Feterik K J Gen Intern Med. 2023; 38(9):2214.

PMID: 37100985 PMC: 10361935. DOI: 10.1007/s11606-023-08198-0.

Medical students' intention to integrate digital health into their medical practice: A pre-peri COVID-19 survey study in Canada.

Pare G, Raymond L, Pomey M, Gregoire G, Castonguay A, Ouimet A Digit Health. 2022; 8:20552076221114195.

PMID: 35898286 PMC: 9309785. DOI: 10.1177/20552076221114195.

EMR Precharting Efficiency in Internal Medicine: A Scoping Review.

Bowman C, Holzer H J Med Educ Curric Dev. 2021; 8:23821205211032414.

PMID: 34345713 PMC: 8280841. DOI: 10.1177/23821205211032414.

The role of undergraduate medical students training in respect for patient confidentiality.

Beltran-Aroca C, Ruiz-Montero R, Labella F, Girela-Lopez E BMC Med Educ. 2021; 21(1):273.

PMID: 33980240 PMC: 8117324. DOI: 10.1186/s12909-021-02689-6.

Medical Student Training in eHealth: Scoping Review.

Echelard J, Methot F, Nguyen H, Pomey M JMIR Med Educ. 2020; 6(2):e20027.

PMID: 32915154 PMC: 7519432. DOI: 10.2196/20027.

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