Cowan, Richard

Louis, Daniel Z.

Mei, Michael

Rabinowitz, Carol

Rattner, Susan L.

English

Name not available

Jefferson\u27s Patient Encounter Log System (PELS)

Jefferson Digital Commons

Health Policy Newsletter ____________________________________________________________ Volume 16 Number 2    June, 2003               Article 2 ____________________________________________________________  Jefferson’s Patient Encounter Log System (PELS)  Daniel Z. Louis, MS* Susan L. Rattner, MD* Richard Cowan* Michael Mei* Carol Rabinowitz*  * Thomas Jefferson University  Copyright ©2003 by the authors.  Health Policy Newsletter is a quarterly publication of Thomas Jefferson University, Jefferson Medical College and the Office of Health Policy and Clinical Outcomes, 1015 Walnut Street, Suite 115, Philadelphia, PA 19107.  Suggested Citation:Louis DZ, Rattner SL, Cowan R, Mei M, Rabinowitz C.  Jefferson’s patient encounter log system (PELS).  Health Policy Newsletter 2003; 16(2): Article 2.  Retrieved [date] from http://jdc.jefferson.edu/hpn/vol16/iss2/2. Daniel Z. Louis, et al.:  Jefferson’s Patient Encounter Log System (PELS) Health Policy Newsletter Vol. 16, No. 2 (June 2003), Article 2 Jefferson’s Patient Encounter Log System (PELS) __________________________________________  If you have been on the Jefferson campus, or at one of our educational affiliates, you have probably seen more and more of our third year medical students busily entering information into their Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs).  While many students were already using these devices for medical reference and their social calendars, the growth in use is due to the implementation of Jefferson’s Patient Encounter Log System (PELS).  The decentralization of clinical teaching networks requires a systematic way of documenting medical students’ clinical and educational experiences across clerkships.  Information collected includes the case-mix of patients, the severity of disease, the components of the history and physical exams performed, diagnostic procedures performed, and documentation of supervision.  Jefferson Medical College (JMC) has long been a leader in documenting our students’ clinical experiences. Since 1997, third year students at JMC have been using computer scanned cards to record their patient encounters.  The value of these data was reported by Jefferson faculty in a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.1 Other analyses have identified differences in severity of illness for common medical problems among clerkship locations and the relationship between student gender and experience with gender related examinations such as testicular, breast and pelvic examinations.2,3  While the manual data collection system has been very useful for educational planning, the new PDA-based Jefferson Patient Encounter Log System offers many advantages. With the card system, feedback to the clerkship coordinators and the students during a clerkship was not possible. With this system, students just need to tap the “Summary” key to review their experiences to date in any clerkship. By sharing this information with faculty at the mid-clerkship review, students can be helped to fill in any gaps in their experience in the remaining time in the clerkship.  Daniel Z. Louis, et al.:  Jefferson’s Patient Encounter Log System (PELS) Health Policy Newsletter Vol. 16, No. 2 (June 2003), Article 2 Data entry is also much simpler.  Previously, the student needed to refer to a printed manual to code diagnostic and disease staging information. With the PELS system, searchable diagnostic lists are included with the software, and the disease staging classification for common medical problems automatically pops up when appropriate, allowing the student, for example, to document the difference between an encounter with a patient with well-controlled diabetes mellitus as compared to an encounter with a patient who may have chronic complications such as retinopathy or neuropathy, or a serious acute exacerbation such as diabetic ketoacidosis.  The manual system enabled us to document and analyze more than 226,000 student-patient encounters. The new Jefferson PELS system will enable collection of an even richer database, better documentation of JMC students’ clinical experiences, and ultimately, even better prepared JMC graduates.  References  1. Rattner SL, Louis DZ, Rabinowitz C, et al. Documenting and comparing medical students’ clinical experiences. JAMA 2001;286:1035-1040.  2. Markham FW, Rattner S, Hojat M, Louis DZ, Rabinowitz C, Gonnella JS. Evaluations of medical students’ clinical experiences in a family medicine clerkship: differences in patient encounters by disease severity in different clerkship sites. Fam Med 2002;34:451-454.  3. Louis DZ, Gottlieb J, Markham FW, Hojat M, Rabinowitz C, Gonnella JS. Students’ gender and examination of patients in a third-year family medicine clerkship. Academic Medicine 1996;71:S19-S21.  About the Authors  Daniel Z. Louis, MS, is Research Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Managing Director of the Center for Research in Medical Education and Health Care;  Susan L. Rattner, MD, is Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs/Undergraduate Medical Education;  Richard Cowan & Michael Mei are in the Application & Web Services Department of Jeff-IT; and Carol Rabinowitz is a Research & Program Analyst in the Center for Research in Medical Education and Healthcare, all at Thomas Jefferson University.  Please address comments to daniel.louis@jefferson.edu.  

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Jefferson\u27s Patient Encounter Log System (PELS)

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