Development of integrated electronic medical and dental record competencies and impact of training modalities.

BACKGROUND

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided incentives for the adoption of electronic health records. The integrated electronic medical and dental records (iEMDRs) can minimize healthcare charting errors. The use of iEMDR by healthcare students requires training and competence. There are no defined student competencies to assess the effective and responsible use of iEMDR in dentistry. The goal of this study was to propose a student competency model and study the impact of training modalities on iEMDR competency.

METHODS

This retrospective observational cohort study evaluated de-identified assessment scores (AS) and performance scores (PS) in predoctoral dental student (PDS) and advanced standing predoctoral (ASP) student cohorts that received remote or in-person iEMDR training. The AS and PS evaluated the knowledge and application of iEMDR, respectively. A voluntary survey evaluated students' self-perceived preparedness for iEMDR use. Linear regressions were used to determine the association between training modality and scores. Mantel-Haenszel ordinal chi-square tested differences between groups and agreement by training type. Statistical significance was set at 0.05.

RESULTS

The sample size (N = 214) provided 95% power to detect differences between study groups. The knowledge of iEMDR (AS) was not impacted due to the training type (p = 0.90) in either student cohorts, whereas the application of knowledge (PS) was higher in ASP student cohort after remote training (p < 0.001) as compared to PDS student cohort. Higher proportion of students perceived preparedness after remote learning in comparison to in-person training (p < 0.001).

DISCUSSION

The iEMDR competency model was useful to test the effective and responsible use of iEMDR, and remote training improved students' self-perceived preparedness.