Integrating patient-centered electronic health record communication training into resident onboarding: Curriculum development and post-implementation survey among housestaff

Abstract

Background: Electronic health record (EHR) use can enhance or undermine the ability of providers to deliver effective, humanistic patient-centered care. Given patient-centered care has been found to positively impact patient health outcomes, it is critical to provide formal education on patient-centered EHR communication skills. Unfortunately, despite increasing worldwide EHR adoption, few institutions educate trainees on EHR communication best practices. Objective: The goal of this research was to develop and deliver mandatory patient-centered EHR training to all incoming housestaff at the University of Chicago. Methods: We developed a brief patient-centered EHR use curriculum highlighting best practices based on a literature search. Training was embedded into required EHR onboarding for all incoming housestaff (interns, residents, and fellows) at the University of Chicago in 2015 and was delivered by institutional Clinical Applications Trainers. An 11-item posttraining survey consisting of ten 5-point Likert scale questions and 1 open-ended question was administered. Responses at the high end of the scale were grouped to dichotomize data. Results: All 158 of the incoming 2015 postgraduate trainees participated in training and completed surveys (158/158, 100.0%). Just over half (86/158, 54.4%) were interns and the remaining were residents and fellows (72/158, 45.6%). One-fifth of respondents (32/158, 20.2%) were primary care trainees (defined as internal medicine, pediatric, and medicine-pediatric trainees), and the remaining 79.7% (126/158) were surgical or specialty trainees. Self-perceived pre-versus posttraining knowledge of barriers, best practices, and ability to implement patient-centered EHR skills significantly increased (3.1 vs 3.9, P