Initial Experiences of Electronic Medical Record Simulation Environment in eHealth Education Course for Medical Students in Finland

Abstract

AbstractDifferent electronic medical record systems (EMR) have established themselves as part of the Finnish health care service provision. There is a need to ensure health care professionals’ competence and training for such systems. The MEDigi project, aimed to modernize and harmonize the Finnish basic medical education, recognized EMR systems as a key competence area for medical professionals in eHealth topics. The project also led to the development of a new eHealth course and an EMR simulation environment targeted for medical students based on the Esko EMR system already in production use.A new simulation environment was developed in cooperation with the Faculty of Medicine at University of Oulu and Esko Systems Ltd. The simulation environment was implemented as an optional exercise in a cross-institutional web-based course teaching eHealth topics to medical students in the spring 2023. Students’ experiences with the simulation environment and associated exercise were collected with a feedback survey using 5- and 10-point Likert scales.An EMR simulation environment “TrainingEsko” was successfully implemented into the “Basics in eHealth for Medical Students” course. Up to 11 medical students took part in the exercise, of which two participated in the associated feedback survey. They expressed satisfaction with the performance of the simulation environment and the associated exercise.Our initial experiences with the EMR simulation environment give support for the further use of the EMR simulation environment in future course implementations. According to the feedback the students found the environment effective and the exercises beneficial for learning about EMR systems.