Academic EHRs improve patient outcomes by training students in proper documentation. This reduces medical errors, enhances clinical judgment, and ensures nurses are practice-ready, directly addressing a critical need in modern healthcare.
Nursing schools are increasingly focused on a critical question: How can we best prepare the next generation of nurses for the digital realities of healthcare? With nearly all hospitals now using electronic health records (EHRs) and nurses spending over a third of their time interacting with them, proficiency is no longer a bonus — it's a fundamental requirement. For EHRs to be effective tools that improve patient outcomes, practicing nurses must enter the workforce with deep competence in this technology.
When healthcare providers have access to complete and accurate information, patients receive safer, more effective care. EHRs are designed to enhance disease management and prevent medical errors, but their success hinges on the user. Nurses need to expertly navigate electronic care plans, gather data for patient education, and complete discharge planning in real-time. Without this foundational skill set, the risk of errors and inefficiencies grows.
Academic EHRs: The link to better patient outcomes
Proper documentation is a cornerstone of patient safety. Negative, and even deadly, patient outcomes can often be traced back to documentation failures. These mistakes also expose healthcare employers to significant liability and malpractice lawsuits. As the frontline providers, nurses trained on proper documentation with an academic EHR can help prevent errors, protect their employers, and ultimately save lives.
Consider the most common types of documentation errors that an academic EHR helps to eliminate:
- Failure to date, time, and sign entries
- Lack of documentation for omitted medications or treatments
- Incomplete or missing documentation
- Adding entries long after an event
- Documenting subjective data incorrectly
- Not questioning incomprehensible orders
- Using unapproved or incorrect abbreviations
- Entering information into the wrong patient chart
An academic EHR provides a controlled environment where students learn to avoid these pitfalls before they ever step into a real clinical setting. This is where nursing education becomes the first line of defense in patient safety.
Practice-ready skills for today’s demands
Nursing schools must leverage academic EHRs to ensure their graduates can positively impact patient outcomes from day one. An effective curriculum integrates fundamental nursing knowledge with the practical application of EHR technology. Students must learn to use the EHR to complete complex clinical calculations, identify potential drug interactions, and quickly scan vast amounts of patient data to make sound clinical decisions.
Until recently, many nursing programs did not include comprehensive EHR use in their curricula, leaving new graduates unprepared for the demands of the job. That trend is shifting. Faculty are now developing curricula that embed simulated EHRs into assignments, assessments, and care plans. This focus is essential to close the gap between a new nurse's informatics knowledge and the skills required for competent practice.
Why experiential learning in an EHR is essential
Students need rich, repeated practice in an EHR throughout their education, not just when they start their first job. They must practice confirming patient identities, verifying provider orders, and ensuring medication accuracy — all within the EHR interface. This repeated exposure across clinical, simulation, and classroom settings helps them appreciate the vigilance required to manage documentation and patient care effectively.
Research shows that students who use academic EHRs report improved charting performance, stronger critical thinking skills, and greater preparedness for practice after graduation. Likewise, instructors find that academic EHRs are invaluable teaching tools that provide realistic patient cases and the ability to offer immediate, constructive feedback to develop clinical reasoning.
An educational EHR can:
- Help students become proficient in patient documentation
- Enhance classroom learning with patient-centered activities
- Allow students to fulfill graduation requirements for EHR practice
- Add realism to simulation scenarios
- Enable customization of scenarios to build clinical judgment
- Prepare students for the variety of EHRs in practice.
Lippincott DocuCare: The standard in EHR education
Lippincott® DocuCare® is the premier EHR training solution guaranteed to prepare students for the clinical demands of nursing. This academic EHR enhances clinical learning by contextualizing realistic, evidence-based patient scenarios with hands-on documentation in an intuitive platform.
Lippincott DocuCare is designed to:
- Teach students essential, must-have nursing skills
- Improve patient safety by reducing medication errors in practice
- Increase time spent on direct patient care upon transitioning to practice
- Provide evidence-based guidelines for patient care
- Incorporate competencies for meeting educational standards.
As one student from Northwestern Connecticut Community College in Winchester, CT. noted, "DocuCare allows a streamlined way for students to focus their clinical skills and their charting skills. It was really a great experience." An instructional specialist from the University of Pittsburgh added, "Whether it's creating a brand-new chart from scratch or modifying one that's pre-programmed, it does not take long for an inexperienced user to gain proficiency."
See how Lippincott DocuCare can elevate your program and prepare your students for practice.
