We were recently talking to one of our schools with a Medical Assisting class and got a great idea for how to use an Academic EHR in a Nursing or Medical Assisting classroom when it comes to injections and vaccines.
Choose a patient to display during class and add a severe egg allergy to that patient's allergy list. Then, add an order for either a Flu or Yellow Fever vaccine.
After a discussion on allergies and/or vaccines, pull up a patient's chart during the discussion. Have students review the information before asking the class "so what do we have to do with this patient today?". Looking at the orders list, students should notice the vaccine.
If students have access to their own computers or tablets, have them review the patient's information and then chart whether they give the vaccine or not. If you are using one computer on a projector, display the Patient Summary (which lists all orders, vitals and allergies) and ask students if they would like to proceed.
Hopefully, they'll notice the egg allergy.
If not, you can always, as an instructor, go in after the students suggest administering the vaccine and change the patient's vitals to reflect an anaphylactic reaction. Ask the students what is happening to the patient based on his/her changed vital signs? Why might that be happening? What would be the appropriate response to the situation? How can that be avoided when students are out on their own?
Just like some of our other teaching ideas, we're still using a chart, but we're not teaching charting. An Electronic Health Record System isn't just about recording information, it's a way to review information just like a student will review the entire patient after graduation.
