Universities are beginning to value the importance of EHR training early in a career to help ease the transition to the next level.
The University of North Florida (UNF) has announced a new EHR training program to help graduating students prepare for future jobs in the health IT field.
Partnering with Optimum Healthcare, a staffing and consulting services firm, UNF is hosting the country’s first EHR apprenticeship program at the collegiate level aimed to train graduating students on specific EHR platforms.
The university said both new and recent graduates can apply to the program and those accepted will be hired by Optimum and paid throughout the 12-week apprenticeship program. Once the 12-week program is completed, the individuals will join Optimum project teams with the end-goal of being hired by a hospital client.
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With the appointment of UNF’s first Vice President of Jobs, our University has a dedicated position in creating strong job opportunities for our students, and we are excited to be hosting America’s first apprenticeship program for electronic health records,” David Syzmanski, UNF president, said in a statement.
“Thousands of current and future UNF graduates will benefit from this streamlined pathway to obtain great first jobs in the growing healthcare IT sector.”
According to Burning Glass Technologies, there are over 40,000 available jobs that relate to integrating, implementing, configuring, or activating EHR systems. Quality initial EHR training is essential to its users and research shows it is the top predictor of EHR user satisfaction. Researchers recommend at least four hours of EHR training to help improve EHR satisfaction.
“Without the trained EHR talent they need, healthcare organizations are struggling to reap the fruits of the digital revolution in healthcare in terms of improving patient outcomes and reducing costs,” Greg Scheurer, executive chairman of Optimum, said in a statement.
“Optimum is investing in high potential graduates, providing them the exact skills our clients are seeking, and a pathway to great careers in healthcare technology.”
The apprenticeship will be held at the University’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Jacksonville, Florida.
EHR training is important to reducing clinician burnout and beginning this process with young clinicians is a step in the right direction.
The University of Buffalo, Cerner Corporation, and the Great Lakes Integrated Medical Record (GLIMR) collaborated in early 2020 to create an EHR training program at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Buffalo.
“Documentation of the clinical encounter is an important skill for the student physician,” Andrew Symons, MD, vice chair for medical student education in the Department of Family Medicine at the Jacobs School, said at the time of the announcement.
“When students begin clinical rotations in the third year of medical school, they all need to utilize an EMR,” continued Symons, who is also the director of the first-year clinical skills course. “As our community more widely adopts GLIMR, students will be using the system in most of their inpatient and outpatient clinical rotations.”
Prior to the launch of this training program, students transcribed their clinicals on Microsoft Word. Following the launch, students utilized Cerner’s EHR educational domain, much like a clinician.
The first class started in the spring 2020 semester and at the time of the announcement, Symons explained that 35 medical students signed up as “super users.” These individuals helped sort out technical issues prior to the spring.
“Our hope is that by the time students enter their third year they will be quite facile with the EMR,” Symons said. “We even expect they will be offering insights to their attending physicians and administrators.”
Source: EHR Intelligence