The cutting edge: surgical education for medical students and a patient care system

This paper describes computer-assisted instruction designed for medical students on their clinical surgery rotation. Patient care systems continue to evolve; incentives for physician participation should include educational benefits and clinical practice guidelines. Sometimes overlooked in the rush to develop expert systems are medical students, who do not have the depth of knowledge inherent in decision support. Foothills Hospital in Calgary, Canada, uses the TDS HC4000 patient care system, where physicians and medical students enter their orders directly on the terminals. The Surgical Patient Care Program was developed to help students learn the basics of peri-operative patient management. The Program runs on the HC4000 and consists of a collection of order sets with appended educational information to guide students in their automated order selection. Unlike other instructional programs, which use fictitious patients, students enter real orders on real patients. Tracking of usage indicates that the Program is popular with students, who each access it an average of 20 times per week. An ongoing study will determine any educational benefit by measuring student performance at Foothills Hospital against a control group at another hospital, which does not have a computerized patient care system.