EGOOZ: Specifying the Components of Electronic Patient Record-related Education A. Hasman 1 , P. Moorman 2 , P. F. de Vries-Robbé 3 , R. Bindels 4 , P. Zandstra 3 , W. van Ast 4 , J. van der Lei 2 1 Department of Medical Informatics, Academic Medical Centre – University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2 Department of Medical Informatics, Erasmus Medisch Centrum, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands 3 Department of Medical Informatics, UMC St Radboud, Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands 4 Department of Medical Informatics, University of Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands Summary Objective: To determine whether educators consider electronic patient record (EPR)-related education necessary and if so, what subjects have to be taught more extensively in the future. Methods: A list of possibly relevant subjects was determined from the literature. A questionnaire was designed which contained those subjects and the re- spondents were asked to indicate, for each subject, its competency level and required competency level in current teaching. Since the response rate was low a second questionnaire was developed to have the results of the analysis of the first questionnaire validated by a larger group of educators. Results: In total 45 learning goals were identified from the literature. The questionnaire was sent to represen- tatives of several disciplines: basic medical education, medical specializations, pharmacy, dentistry and nurs- ing. The analysis of the first questionnaire resulted in nine subjects that needed more attention in the future. Because of the low response the needs could not be specified for the individual disciplines. This insight was obtained from a second questionnaire. The response to this questionnaire was high. From the analysis of the second questionnaire differences between views of educators involved in the training of GPs and educators involved in the training of other specializations were observed. Conclusion: Educators find EPR-related education im- portant. There are different opinions about the phase in which EPR-related education should be given. Keywords Electronic patient records, education, medical informatics, curriculum Methods Inf Med 2006; 45: 305–9 Introduction Health professionals increasingly need medical informatics education. The work of health professionals is dominated by in- formation collection, storage and retrieval and reasoning. Health professionals use both patient data and medical and nursing knowl- edge for patient management. However, the amount of medical and nursing knowledge increases so quickly that health profes- sionals cannot stay fully informed. They therefore need methods and tools to access relevant information or knowledge at the time it is needed. Medical informatics has developed tools and methods that can make the life of health professionals easier. This includes tools to acquire relevant knowledge but also tools to obtain patient data. With electronic patient records (EPRs), clinical patient data can be stored and re- trieved. When the data are expressed with the help of a standard vocabulary functions like reminding, alerting and providing ac- cess to relevant knowledge are easily inter- faced with the EPR. Health professionals should have insight in and knowledge of the principles, concepts and methods under- lying electronic patient records. Part of the education in medical informatics should therefore be devoted to conveying that knowledge. In the Netherlands, national research agencies and the government stimulate the introduction of EPRs in health care. These organizations also realized that the intro- duction of EPRs in healthcare environments needs to be accompanied by educational and training programs. The medical informatics departments of the universities of Maas- tricht, Rotterdam and Nijmegen were asked to determine which subjects related to EPR-related education are still under- exposed in university and vocational train- ing programs. They were asked to investi- gate a broad spectrum of disciplines cover- ing medicine (both basic medical education and the training for medical specialists), nursing, pharmacy and dentistry. In this contribution the results of this study with re- spect to basic medical education and the training for specialists are reported. Methods Determination of Potential Learning Goals To determine which EPR-related topics are underexposed in the various programs, a reference list is needed that contains all EPR-related topics. Such a reference list was composed via an analysis of the liter- ature. The relevance of each topic in the list had to be determined. The obtained topics were therefore reformulated as learning goals and grouped under a number of sub- ject headings. The determination of the rel- evance was considered to be a task for the educators. 305 © 2006 Schattauer GmbH Methods Inf Med 3/2006