Computerized administrative monitoring system for interns and residents

During the last decade, the role of the government and the professional corporations in approving graduate programmes, licensing interns and residents and requesting statistical information has expanded greatly. The result has been a dramatic increase in administrative workload. At McGill University, the response of the Faculty of Medicine was the introduction of a Computerized Administrative Monitoring System (CAMS) for interns and residents, which provides immediate access, via a video display terminal, to any applicant's or trainee's information file. CAMS also provides timely reports on the status of administrative requirement for both the specialty programmes and the interns and residents assigned to them. The design and implementation of CAMS on the central university time-sharing computer system is described. Some measures of the effort of design, implement and run the system are included, along with an indication of the benefits to the clerical and medical staff who administer the 40 specialty programmes and some 1000 medical trainees.