The emrU project brings Electronic Medical Records (EMR) to the classroom as a teaching tool for the Carver College of Medicine and other Health Science Colleges and Programs. With this new tool, students can gain experience with electronic medical record software and instructors can use it to enhance case studies and provide model patients. This software environment will also facilitate training in team-based medicine.
Electronic Medical Records
Electronic Medical Record systems are becoming the norm across the country and around the world. It is important for students to gain experience with this tool of modern medicine early, from the very beginning of their training and before direct patient contact.
While students will be working within a specific software environment, the concepts (eRx, electronic charting, etc.) and lessons taught here will be easily transferable to the wide variety of Electronic Medical Record systems commercially available today.
The Classroom
By building a unique hybrid teaching and playground environment students will have the opportunity to explore a complex software tool in a simulated patient environment without fear of making mistakes or adding incorrect information to a patient's indelible medical record.
Instructors can use the system to teach from model patients presenting with various symptoms and histories for the students to diagnose in-class or as an after class exercise. These patients will be tailored to the class and students will be able to use many of the features of an EMR in working with these model patients.
Students will be able to record vitals, select diagnoses, and chart on model patients in the system. They will also be able to practice ordering prescriptions and procedures electronically, working with the system's built-in decision support and respond to results from laboratory and radiology.
Finally, reporting tools that allow students and physicians alike to evaluate their performance will be utilized. These reports can evaluate performance against others in the classroom, a preset departmental standard or simply against peers in the same clinic. In this way, the system will also be a tool for evaluation of student performance, whether per individual or on a team-by-team basis.
Interprofessional Education
As part of the University of Iowa’s push for interprofessional education, this environment can be used to facilitate mock clinics where students from various colleges and professions work together in real-time via the emrU system. Students will emulate their future job roles and learn how specialized EMR software can enhance their particular specialty and facilitate communications between diverse members of a patient’s care team.
This is only a small part of the exciting new curriculum that the University of Iowa is building for students.
To learn more about this curriculum, visit the MD website. Further information about the interprofessional education at Iowa may be found on the Interprofessional Education at the University of Iowa’s Health Sciences Colleges website.