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Training The Next Generation
July 1, 2008
Last fall, University of South Florida Health in Tampa added a new class to its medical school curriculum. But instead of focusing on an emerging disease or care regimen, the class provides instruction on how to use electronic health records.
The two-hour, single-session class covers various EHR topics, including security and specific uses. And now all USF medical students must take it at the beginning of each school year
USF Health created the EHR class at the suggestion of a new administrator who wanted the school to help prepare its students to work at clinics that use the technology. While the inaugural class didn’t require students to be tested on the material, the school plans to add tests next year, says Michael P. Williams, technical trainer at USF Physicians group, a 450-physician, multi-specialty group practice affiliated with the school.
USF Health also plans to expand the class to include information about different types of EHRs and how they integrate with billing systems, he adds. The inaugural class only focused on the use of an EHR from Allscripts LLC, Chicago, the software used at the USF practice. “Clinics are moving into EHRs,” Williams says. “So we want to keep our students the ones that clinics want to bring in.”
Medical students previously were exposed to clinical information systems only during their third and fourth years if they came into contact with them as part of their clinical training at hospitals or physician practices. But over the past few years, many medical schools have begun a new approach to teaching future doctors about electronic records, says Morgan Passimort, director of information resources outreach and liaison for the group on information resources for the Association of American Medical Colleges, Washington.
“There’s been a concern that students aren’t familiar with the situations they are going into with EHRs,” she says. “So now we are seeing institutions really evaluating what tools are most effective and sometimes learning from students how they want to use information in care.”
Medical schools, however, run the gamut in their approach to EHR instruction, Passimort says. Some, like USF Health, offer an introductory class at the beginning of each school year. Others integrate EHR training into their entire four-year curriculum.
The EHR training strategy medical schools take often is a result of the financial and technical resources available to support the effort, Passimort contends. But she believes medical schools will continue to ramp up their I.T. training.
Secure Environment
To enable students to use the records software at the USF practice without accessing private patient data, Allscripts duplicated the system on a separate server that could be populated with mock data. The duplicate system has the same features, functionalities and periodic upgrades as the application in use at the USF practice.
Students are given a user name and password to access the system on PCs during the class or via a Web portal if they want to refer to it later. While some have complained the class just adds to their busy schedules, others have embraced it, anticipating they’d need to use an EHR in their future practice, Williams says.
The school continues to teach future physicians how to use paper charts, just in case they find work in a facility lacking electronic records, Williams says. And while the class will continue to mostly focus on the Allscripts system, it also will help students prepare for using different EHR applications, he adds.
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