Effective training for resident EHR use necessitates collaboration between medical assistants and residents. A JAMIA study stresses proactive learning through inquiry for proficient EHR utilization and clinical documentation. While enhanced residency EHR training boosts efficiency, increasing documentation mandates demand balancing residents’ time. Recommendations include fostering mentorship and learning environments, emphasizing personal initiative, and encouraging patient involvement to alleviate documentation burden and burnout risks.
Building effective Electronic Health Record (EHR) proficiency among residents requires a collaborative effort between medical assistants and residents themselves, according to researchers. A study featured in JAMIA underscores the significance of proactive learning through inquiry for residents to master EHR utilization and clinical documentation.
This investigation involved qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted with 32 residents and 13 clinic staff members within an internal medicine residency program.
Enhanced EHR training within residency programs can enhance the efficiency of EHR usage, granting residents more time to advance their clinical acumen and elevate patient care quality. Nevertheless, the escalating documentation mandates from both payers and regulators impose notable temporal and effort-related constraints on residents. Therefore, the authors highlight the necessity of including both fundamental EHR proficiency and documentation skills development in resident EHR training.
Though research on effective EHR training for residents is limited, with only four relevant studies identified in a recent literature review, a key challenge is to strike a balance between time commitments and tailored learning opportunities.
Through their qualitative study, the researchers revealed that effective EHR utilization stems from a blend of structured interventions facilitated by residency programs and personal initiative displayed by residents.
The researchers noted, “In particular, while initial onboarding training establishes a foundational knowledge base, continuous learning opportunities are pivotal for the development of effective clinical skills. Such opportunities encompass structured mentorship relationships between senior and junior residents and fostering an environment where residents feel at ease seeking guidance from all clinic personnel.”
For instance, the study highlighted the insights provided by medical assistants (MAs) and residents who identified MAs as possessing a unique perspective on the challenges residents encounter while fulfilling EHR documentation requirements.
“To address these issues, clinic rotations during residency should encourage closer interaction between MAs and residents, allowing MAs to mentor and train residents in response to these challenges,” the authors recommended.
Promoting resident interaction to exchange optimal EHR practices can also lead to skill enhancement and a greater willingness to share knowledge among peers.
In the current landscape, most hospitals and medical facilities rely on EHR systems to manage patient health data, while payers increasingly adopt compensation models based on performance and outcomes. This has led to a considerable surge in documentation obligations for physicians over recent years.
For residents, this translates to reduced time for honing clinical skills, diminished patient engagement, and longer work hours, potentially culminating in burnout.
The researchers emphasized that since EHR systems are now a fixture, actionable remedies are indispensable for residency programs to tackle these hurdles. One solution suggested is empowering patients to assume a more active role in their care.
Residents in the study often felt overwhelmed by EHR alerts prompting quality measure documentation during visits for acute issues. Ideally, quality measures should be addressed during annual wellness visits. Encouraging patients to schedule and adhere to these visits would enable residents to focus on acute care visits.
“This approach would additionally afford residents the time needed to create personalized preventive care strategies for a larger portion of their patients, enhancing health outcomes for these individuals and further refining the residents’ clinical abilities,” the researchers underscored.
They further proposed that healthcare providers could utilize patient portals for this purpose. Patients could be sent a pre-visit questionnaire containing quality measure inquiries along with a video outlining the documentation process’s significance and procedures.
