162 - Rehab EMR Crash Course- Teaching Electronic Medical Records to Medical Students

Objectives: Medical students on inpatient Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) rotations must demonstrate proficiency in navigating the electronic medical record (EMR) to provide medical care and gather relevant information for the rehabilitation team. There is no standardized method of teaching medical students how to navigate the EMR. Given their short rotation blocks, they are often forced to either experiment or rely on residents.

The primary objective of this quality improvement project was to assess PM&R residents' satisfaction with, and the amount of time spent teaching medical students how to navigate the EMR. The secondary objective was to assess if medical students and residents would find an EMR guide for medical students to be useful.

Design: A standardized self-directed guide on how to navigate the rehabilitation EMR (including bowel, bladder, sleep log, agitation, and therapy schedules) was created and distributed to rotating medical students from February 2023- June 2023. A 4-question survey was administered to 22 Northwestern PM&R residents regarding teaching medical students how to navigate the EMR. 71 medical students who rotated at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab completed a 1 question-survey regarding whether the EMR guide was useful.

Results: The majority (55%) of residents were very dissatisfied or dissatisfied with teaching medical students about EMR use. The majority (55%) of residents reported that 20-50% of their time spent teaching medical students was related to EMR use. 83% of residents agreed that the EMR guide decreased the amount of time spent teaching the medical students how to navigate the EMR. 76% of medical students thought the EMR guide was a useful resource.

Conclusions: This study demonstrated that providing medical students with a standardized self-directed guide to learn to navigate the rehabilitation EMR was beneficial for both residents and medical students, ideally allowing more time for PM&R specific education.