Electronic Health Record and the EHR Classroom

The use of an Electronic Health Record (EHR) is essential to the modern practice of medicine. EHRs are a core component of healthcare informatics, which is a domain of Health Systems Science (HSS). Along with Basic Science and Clinical Science, HSS forms the foundation for our curricula and the health of our patients.  Electronic Health Records are employed for critical elements of patient care including documentation, provider and patient communication, quality analyses, ordering, medication prescribing, and reconciliation; as such they are also central to Clinical Science. Our learners represent the future of medical practice and as such require training that will allow them to build skills for meaningful engagement with EHRs. 

The EHR Classroom is an experiential learning tool designed to help our students acquire and practice skills for clinical problem-solving and patient care though safe and effective utilization of diverse and authentic patient cases. Created in the Epic training environment and integrated with didactic, lab, and simulation learning, the EHR Classroom supports discipline-specific and interprofessional case-based learning in parallel with appropriate use of an EHR. The creation of robust cases spanning a broad spectrum of social determinants of health, healthcare settings, and conditions brings diverse, longitudinal patient care into course activities to enrich both teaching and learning throughout the curriculum. 

The development of the EHR Classroom is a dynamic and collaborative process at UMass Chan Medical School involving faculty, students, and staff from across our institution in partnership with both school and clinical information technology teams. Materials on this page are created to support your basic access to and navigation of the EHR Classroom. A UMass Chan (umassmed.edu) username and password are required. For more information please contact: 

Alexander Menard, NP   (Alexander.Menard@umassmemorial.org)
Melissa A. Fischer, MD MEd  (Melissa.Fischer@umassmed.edu) 
Mitch Gitkind, MD   (Mitchell.Gitkind@umassmemorial.org)

We are interested in your feedback and ideas for ongoing EHR classroom development and improvement, as any errors, omissions or conflicts you may find in your use of the cases. Please email the faculty noted with your feedback. Provide as much detail as possible, and if appropriate please add your own contact information so we can follow up with you directly with any questions.