Purpose
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are ubiquitous in healthcare making familiarity with digital records increasingly important for medical trainees. Currently, no standards exist for educating medical students on EHR use in patient care and students do not receive formal training before their clinical rotations. The American Association of Medical Colleges recommends that medical schools integrate informatics-related learning objectives and tools in pre-clinical years. This abstract describes development and evaluation of an educational module introducing students to the appropriate use of EHRs.

Methods
A multidisciplinary team of medical educators from two medical schools, instructional designers, and public health professionals developed an online module introducing students to the EHR. This self-paced module introduces students to EHRs and provides a real-time patient record simulation to train novice learners, establishing a foundation for more efficient EHR use. The module addresses effective communication techniques for use EHRs during patient interactions. Also included is a documentation exercise of a standardized patient visit into a prototypical EHR, allowing data entry practice for students. First-year medical students were invited to participate in piloting the module and competed pre- and post-surveys to assess learning outcomes.

Results
Fifty first-year medical students completed the module and filled out surveys. There was a significant improvement in knowledge about documentation and use of the EHR. Qualitative analyses of participant responses showed that the module content was helpful and engaging for tasks like note-taking and patient charting.

Conclusions
This module effectively introduced novice medical students to the fundamentals of patient care documentation in the context of an EHR. This brief self-paced online learning approach facilitates implementation across pre-clinical curricula. Early introduction of EHR education will train students to interface with it accurately and efficiently, leading to improved provider satisfaction and patient outcomes.