Medical Student Participation with the Electronic Health Record

The AAFP encourages all clinical sites to allow medical student participation in patient electronic health records for the benefit of patient care and student education. Adequate medical student training depends on a student's ability to access relevant information available to other members of the care team, to document findings, to communicate with other clinicians, and to reflect independent clinical reasoning. The AAFP supports access to EHRs for all medical students at no additional cost from the EHR vendor.

Student participation in EHRs must be appropriately supervised according to the student’s level of skill and experience. Student participation in EHRs should not detract from other learning opportunities nor create an over-reliance on student documentation for clinical operations.

(2012 COD) (September 2022 COD)