Finding the middle path in tracking former patients in the electronic health record for the purpose of learning

As medical trainees gain clinical experience, they increasingly form diagnoses based on their association with predisposing conditions and clinical features rather than pathophysiological explanations. Knowledge of these associations is housed as scripts in long-term memory, and data from the expertise literature imply that expert performance is largely explained by experts possessing more accurate scripts. In rotation-based clerkships, students typically spend a short period of time involved in the care of patients and are frequently deprived of the opportunity to observe the evolution and resolution of illness and the correct association between predisposing conditions, clinical features, and final diagnosis that is required for accurate script formation. Thanks to the introduction of an electronic health record (EHR), students now have the opportunity to track former patients until the final diagnosis and response to treatment is known. Although former patients are unlikely to benefit from being tracked by medical students, this type of learning experience may help students form more accurate scripts and, thus, improve their diagnostic performance on subsequent patients. But, because the purpose of EHRs is to improve clinical care of patients, is it ethically acceptable to allow students no longer involved in the care of patients to use these data solely for the purposes of learning? In this Commentary, the authors highlight the potential for ethical conflict whenever clinical care and teaching mingle, and discuss how these competing interests can still be balanced in the face of advancing technology by applying universal ethical principles and following the advice of Hippocrates.