Leeds Medical Students get Hands-On Experience of SystmOne
August saw a major teaching innovation for students in the University of Leeds Medical School. For the first time they gained access to a real version of a Connecting for Health clinical information system (SystmOne) and used it in their preparation for GP placements. They logged on to the medical school’s SystmOne training practice and undertook an exercise in patient data entry and prescribing.
This is a further development of a project initially funded by Connecting for Health but now supported by Bradford and Airedale Teaching PCT to give students early exposure to the systems they will be using once qualified.
By using real systems it allows them to see the richness of the electronic records which are used on a daily basis within the NHS. This has many advantages over using surrogate, virtual hospital systems which tend to have limited functionality and are costly to develop and difficult to maintain. SystmOne was an ideal platform to use for this purpose as it is web-based and easily accessible over the academic network. It is also widely used in Yorkshire and the Humber in practices the students attend.
The project was initiated by the Yorkshire Centre for Health Informatics but now includes collaborations with Primary Care in the Institute of Health Sciences, Bradford and Airedale Teaching PCT, Airedale NHS Trust and TPP, who all see the benefit of training doctors early in the use of electronic records.
As well as giving students hands-on experience of a real system, the first session generated insight into the benefits and drawbacks of using coded data entry as opposed to free text narratives. The students also saw for themselves many of the benefits that flow from structured records such as the automated calculation of derived values like BMI and the associated decision support tools for cardiovascular risk.
Many of them commented about how much they enjoyed the two-hour session and how they felt it would prepare them for their four-week placement in general practice. In the past, they have found it difficult to appreciate how the computer systems were used by GPs but many said that this learning experience would help them gain more from their time in general practice.
It is expected that based on the evaluations of this work with this cohort that the project may be extended to students in other health disciplines such as nurses and physiotherapists. In time, it is expected that a full range of teaching materials will be developed covering aspects such as information governance, consent, inter-professional communication, prescribing and chronic disease management. One intention is to use these across the new curriculum in Leeds and possibly to make these available to other medical schools in the UK.
For more info, contact Susan Clamp at YCHI, s.clamp@leeds.ac.uk or see www.ychi.leeds.ac.uk
