First-year medical students can demonstrate EHR-specific communication skills: a control-group study.

Background And Objectives: Graduating medical students will universally use electronic health records (EHRs), yet a June 2007 literature search revealed no descriptions of EHR-specific communication skills curricula in US medical schools. We designed and tested methods to teach first-year medical students to optimally integrate EHRs into physician-patient communication in ambulatory encounters.

Methods: We randomly assigned 17 volunteer students to control (n=8) and intervention (n=9) groups.