CI MED-designed Electronic Health Record Drives Realism in Simulation and Classroom Training

A Carle Illinois College of Medicine student team has developed a new electronic medical record system that brings the clinical documentation experience to life in health care simulations and the classroom. The new system, called Project EHR, is being piloted at CI MED’s Jump Simulation Center, offering students unprecedented early exposure to tools that parallel those used to plan and chart patient care in major hospitals and clinics.

“With this system, CI MED has the opportunity to be the first school to really change the way in which preclinical students contextualize the textbook material they learn,” said CI MED student Aditya Vaidyam, the system’s architect.

Modern electronic health record (EHR) systems play a central role in ensuring care continuity across the health care system. Doctors use them to order lab tests and review results, prescribe treatments, and communicate with all members of the health care team. But most medical students gain only limited experience with EHRs before clinical rotations, typically in their third year of medical school. CI MED is piloting the new system with first- and second-year medical students in the safe learning environment of medical simulations.

Improving Medical Education

“This system allows students to actually place orders as they would as residents or attending physicians and think through the differential diagnosis in real time while in the simulation session with the standardized patient,” Vaidyam said. “This EHR is designed to track a learner’s usage closely, so we will be able to better understand how learners are progressing through simulation cases in real time and guide students to be more efficient, say by their fourth year,” he said.

Jump Simulation Center Manager Shandra Jamison says the system creates a unique learning opportunity for students by reinforcing clinical reasoning through realistic data review, teaching accurate documentation, and building competency in workflow. “It improves the fidelity and immersion of the simulation to prepare the students for real clinical experience,” Jamison said.

"Ultimately, it improves performance and confidence that leads to better patient outcomes."
Shandra Jamison
Jump Simulation Center Manager

The new system is built to meet international medical standards, making it a powerful tool that can improve classroom education and prepare students for the challenge of medical residency.

“For example, when first-year medical students learn about pulmonary diseases, their lecturer can open cases in the EHR and pull up tagged chest X-rays or CT scans to show them in a more realistic manner,” Vaidyam said. The EHR also offers an advantage to more advanced students as they prepare for the USMLE Step 3 Exam, which tests their ability to manage a patient problem through a virtual EHR-like case simulator.

The Pilot Results

Vaidyam says the student response in the first few pilots has been very positive, opening the possibility of expanded uses in the future. “We are continuing to work with the JUMP simulation center to develop this project into a mainstay of all the simulations done here [at CI MED]. We are also working to improve its use as a stand-alone tool for students to self-learn from across the four years of medical school,” Vaidyam said.

First-year medical student Franklin Ruan was part of the student team that developed Project EHR and one of the early users during a recent simulation involving a patient with kidney problems. “It was really nice to use the medical record for putting in orders. If we’re just kind of thrown into an emergency situation, without knowing what to do, it can be really awkward in the beginning. I think getting through those awkward bumps now through this simulation is definitely what it’s made to do, and I think that was executed very well,” Ruan said.

Vaidyam credits CI MED’s emphasis on innovation and problem-solving with giving him a platform to pursue the project and incorporate it into patient simulations. “I don’t think this project would have been possible anywhere else,” he said.

Story by Beth Hart
Video by Virgil Ward II